fewer
detUS /ˈfjuː.ɚ/
Etymology From Middle English fewere, equivalent to few + -er.
1
Comparative comparative degree of few; a smaller number.
- Fewer women wear hats these days.
- There are fewer tigers than there were a hundred years ago.
2 more examples
- Construction of the station and approach line involved considerable engineering work and the demolition of no fewer than 540 houses and a church, […].1957 August 23, “Notes and News; Tithebarn Street Station, Liverpool”, in Railway Magazine, page 589:
- This hypothesis goes by many names, including group resistence, the threshold effect, and the gender paradox. Because the hypothesis holds such wide appeal, it is worth revisiting the logic behind it. The hypothesis is built on the factual observation that fewer females than males act antisocially.2001 September 27, Terrie E. Moffitt, Avshalom Caspi, Michael Rutter, Phil A. Silva, Sex Differences in Antisocial Behaviour: Conduct Disorder, Delinquency, and Violence in the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 151:
2
Hypercorrect Less; a smaller amount of something non-integral commonly expressed as an integer
- Leaving from my home in Alameda, the heavily BART-assisted journey took fewer than five hours round trip.2026 May 7, Peter Hartlaub, “This former Bay Area rail line is a biking paradise. And you don’t need a car to get there”, in San Francisco Chronicle, page A11:
- Derived terms
- could care fewer, the fewer the better fare
- Related terms
- less