“Fewer” is traditionally used when comparing quantities of individually countable things or people—as for example, when we say “There are fewer shops downtown nowadays,” or “I eat fewer salads in the winter,”…
Vocabulary
Judging the quantity of quantities
The actual amounts referred to by expressions of quantity can be vague and hard to pin down. Below is a chart of quantity expressions listed in a divided continuum from completely negative…
The meaning of “some” as a quantity expression
The word “some” indicates a quantity of something, but it doesn’t strongly signal any particular quantity or any particular feeling that the actual quantity is important. There is very little difference, with…
The meaning of quantity expressions
If we really think about it, quantity expressions, other than actual numbers and words like “none,” do not specify exact amounts, and some vary widely in the actual amounts they can refer to. The choice of any one of them—“several,” “a lot,” “a bit,” “a few,” “many”– depends on how the speaker feels about the amount being referred to, and whether that amount feels small or large or somewhere in between.
Word Parts II: basic suffixes
Suffixes are word parts that are added to a root to create a word (e.g., “dent” + “-al” = “dental”) or to a root word to create a new word (e.g., “soft” + “ness” = “softness”). Suffixes often change a root word’s part of speech and sometimes they make a significant change in the meaning too. For example, the suffix “-less” changes a noun to an adjective and also changes the meaning a great deal. Compare “tooth” and “toothless,” for instance! Some suffixes add grammatical information to a root without changing the part of speech.