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Cool! But the OED disagrees: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/few http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/few The wikipedia article says that using fewer for
by lincolnq 17y ago
Cool! But the OED disagrees: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/few http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/few
The wikipedia article says that using fewer for counting nouns is fairly new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less
So I guess you're probably right, and it's not worth correcting people on this matter.
(But I'm probably still going to use fewer instead of less).
- spatulon 17y agoThe distinction can be important. For example, are you one of the less intelligent members of HN, or one of the fewer intelligent members of HN?
- petercooper 17y agoCute example but the fewer vs less argument is for when those words affect the same word. In "less intelligent members," less is an adverb affecting the verb of the sentence, whereas in "fewer intelligent members," fewer is affecting the number of "members." The word switch is changing the entire meaning of the sentence, but the fewer vs less argument is over using the right word for a single, specific meaning.