few

determinerpronountop 1 000 in film dialogue

//fjuː//
//fɪu̯//

An indefinite, but usually small, number of.

determiner

1
An indefinite, but usually small, number of.
There are a few cars (=some, but a relatively small number) in the street.
Quite a few people (=a significant number) were pleasantly surprised.
I think he's had a few drinks.
The few cheapest hotels I could find are the farthest too.
2
Not many; a small (in comparison with another number stated or implied) but somewhat indefinite number of.
Very few did she have not to go there, did she?
I was expecting a big crowd at the party, but very few people (=almost none) turned up.
Your men are valiant but their number few, And cannot terrifie his mightie hoſt, […]
Already we're seeing fewer cache misses by avoiding creating cache entries for the idle task and expect to see even fewer with changes to the TLB reload code to uncache the page tables.
3
Obscuring one to two oktas (eighths) of the sky.
Tonight: A few clouds. Increasing cloudiness overnight.
NOAA definition of the term few clouds: An official sky cover classification for aviation weather observations, descriptive of a sky cover of 1/8 to 2/8. This is applied only when obscuring phenomena aloft are present--that is, not when obscuring phenomena are surface-based, such as fog.
4
(US?) Having a 10 percent chance of measurable precipitation (0.01 inch); used interchangeably with isolated.

Etymology

From Middle English fewe, from Old English fēaw (“few”), from Proto-West Germanic *fau, from Proto-Germanic *fawaz (“few”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂w- (“few, small”). Cognate with Old Saxon fā (“few”), Old High German fao, fō (“few, little”), Old Norse fár (“few”), Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐌿𐍃 (faus, “few”). Also related with Latin paucus (“little, few”) and pauper (“poor”), from which latter English poor and pauper; see these.

pronoun

1
Few people, few things.
Many are called, but few are chosen.

Forms

comparative: fewer, less
superlative: fewest, least

fetus · An unborn or unhatched vertebrate showing signs of the mature…feud · A state of long-standing mutual hostility.fever · A higher than normal body temperature of a person (or,…

few · An indefinite, but usually small, number of.

Few · The pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain.fewer · Less; a smaller amount of something non-integral commonly…fez · A felt hat in the shape of a truncated cone, having a flat…

The neighbouring pages — Alphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.