few
/fjuː/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Wales/fɪu̯/
few determiner: an indefinite, but usually small, number of.
Determiner
few (comparative fewer or less, superlative fewest or least)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- (US?) Having a 10 percent chance of measurable precipitation (0.01 inch); used interchangeably with isolated.
Pronoun
few
- Few people, few things.
- Many are called, but few are chosen.
Proper noun (1) capitalized: Few
- The pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain.
Proper noun (2) capitalized: Few
Few
- A surname.
few meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu
few in Hindi
- indefinite, usually small number
- कुछ kuch, अल्प alp, न्यून nyūn
- small number
- कम kam
few in Urdu
- indefinite, usually small number
- کچھ kuch, کم kam
- small number
- کم kam
few in Bengali
- indefinite, usually small number
- কম kom
few in Telugu
- indefinite, usually small number
- కొద్ది koddi, కొలది koladi
More languagesFewer languages
- few in Sanskrit
- ईषत् īṣat, स्वल्प svalpa
- few in Pashto
- لږ lëģ
- few in Arabic
- قَلِيل qalīl
- few in Malay
- dikit, sedikit
- few in Indonesian
- sedikit, segelintir
- few in Persian
- کم kam, اندک andak, وید veyd
- few in Thai
- น้อย nɔ́ɔi
- few in Vietnamese
- ít
- few in Myanmar
- နည်း nany:
- Sindhi
- ٿورا thorā
Examples of few in a sentence
- I think he's had a few drinks.
- The few cheapest hotels I could find are the farthest too.
- These “legal highs” are sold for the few months it takes the authorities to identify and ban them, and then the cycle begins again.2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848, London: The Economist Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from...
- 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.1999, Proceedings of the Third Symposium on Operating Systems:
- However, the above passage could have been written more efficiently — if Strunkian concision, using the fewest words possible, is understood as the measure of verbal efficiency.2020, Victoria Rosner, Machines for Living: Modernism and Domestic Life, page 62:
Synonyms of few
Antonyms
Forms of few
| comparative | fewer |
|---|---|
| comparative | less |
| superlative | fewest |
| superlative | least |
Origin of few
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.
From a speech by Winston Churchill that included the phrase "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few".
Words formed from few
- a fair few
- a few
- a few clowns short of a circus
- a few fries short of a Happy Meal
- a few roos loose in the top paddock
- a few spanners short of a tool box
- a good few
- cover-few
- few and far between
- few cards short of a full deck
- few cards shy of a full deck
- few-flowered sedge
- fewfold
- fewly
- fewness
- few sandwiches short of a picnic
- few-shot
- few-shot learning
- have a few
- have a few too many
- in a few shakes
- man of few words
- precious few
- pull a few strings
- quite a few
- some few
- to name a few
- woman of few words
- you've got to crack a few eggs to make an omelette
Phrases with few
Words that rhyme with few
Questions about few
- What does few mean?
- Few means an indefinite, but usually small, number of.
- What is few in Hindi?
- Few in Hindi is कुछ (kuch), अल्प (alp), न्यून (nyūn). See Few meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use few in a sentence?
- I think he's had a few drinks.
- What part of speech is few?
- Few can be a determiner, a pronoun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce few?
- Few is pronounced /fjuː/.
Words near few in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: few (page history and authors); Few (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-uk-few.ogg, en-us-few.ogg.
Cite this entry: “few.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/few. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.