fewer
part of speech
adjective, pronoun (few, fewer, fewest)
meaning for a pupil
1) Fewer means a smaller number of things: «fewer apples». tree →
2) Few means not many; fewest means the smallest number of all. tree →
3) No fewer than means as many as, or more than, a surprisingly large number. tree →
sense in the lessons
a smaller count than someone else's: «A has D fewer than B» is B − D; «How many fewer» asks for a difference; phrases: «fewer than», «no fewer than», «the fewest»
examples
- Max has 2 fewer books than Lily. tree →
- Max has 2 books fewer than Lily. tree →
- How many fewer apples does Tom have than Ben? tree →
- There are fewer children at school when it snows. tree →
- Which team scored the fewest goals? tree →
- Fewer than 10 people came to the show. tree →
- Spiders have fewer legs than centipedes. tree →
- Eat fewer sweets and more fruit. tree →
- There were no fewer than thirty blossoms on its stem. tree →
note
«A has D fewer than B» is B − D. «How many fewer» asks for the difference: subtract. Trap: if A's count is given, B is A + D. Use «fewer» for things you count (fewer apples) and «less» for amounts you do not count (less milk).
In the corpora
- People still love stories written by people, with real experiences behind them, though some writers worry about fewer jobs.
- Deer see fewer colours than we do, so to them an orange tiger looks much like the green and brown leaves around it.
- Sharks kill fewer than about ten people a year worldwide, while people kill tens of millions of sharks every year.
- Fewer than half of wild lion cubs survive their first two years.
- Ostriches have only two toes on each foot, fewer than any other bird.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «fewer» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.