Word Confusion: Fewer versus Less

Posted May 20, 2013 by Kathy Davie in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions

Revised as of
4 Oct 2023

It’s a question of count versus mass. If you can count how many — vacuum cleaners, apples, werewolves, quilts, etc. — it’s a countable noun, which reliably indicates if there are fewer.

Looking at bolts of fabric at a fabric store, at bins of screws and nails at the hardware store, the clutter on top of your desk (and you can see if it’s less of a mess than usual, *grin*) — these are all mass (or uncountable) nouns.

Mignon Fogarty at Quick and Dirty Tips also notes that mass nouns aren’t plural, as in you wouldn’t say clutters, but clutter, furniture and not furnitures.

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

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Fewer	Less
Cars at a URA Car Park is ProjectManhattan’s own work under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons. Creag Leathen from Glen Feshie Car Park by Elliott Simpson is under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons. — There are six fewer cars in the bottom parking lot.	Chest Waxing by vanz is a derivative work by Beao under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons. — Well, he does have less hair on the right.
Part of Grammar:
Comparative form of few, which may itself be an adjective or a pronoun	Adjective; Adverb; Preposition; Pronoun; Suffix
Used with words denoting people or countable things	Used with mass nouns, denoting things that cannot be counted Normally used with numbers and expressions of measurement or time
Adjective and Pronoun: [A few] A small number of Used to emphasize how small a number of people or things is	Adjective: [Archaic] Of lower rank or importance Adverb: To a smaller extent Not so much [less than] Far from Certainly not Determiner: A smaller amount of Not as much Preposition: Before subtracting something Minus Pronoun: A smaller amount of Not as much Fewer in number Suffix: [-less] Forms adjectives and adverbs using -less [From nouns] Not having Without Free from [From verbs] Not affected by or not carrying out the action of the verb
Examples:
Adjective: Grocery store signs should say: “Ten items or fewer”. Not “Ten items or ~~less~~.” If you’d ask fewer questions . . . He had fewer friends than Mabel. Ask which products have fewer complaints. Pronoun: I will recount fewer of the stories told me. Many believe it but only fewer are prepared to say. Fewer thought to challenge these assumptions. Fewer of the titles released these days have any literary merit. We have fewer members every year. There are fewer than ten cars left. Sadly, even fewer survived.	Adjective: James the Less wasn’t much of a king. You should eat less meat. Adverb: He listened less to the answer than to Kate’s voice. That this is a positive stereotype makes it no less a stereotype. Mitch looked less than happy. The data was less than ideal. Less than two weeks before vacation! No matter how quickly we work, we seem to accomplish less. Determiner: The less time spent there, the better. Preposition: It will cost $900,000 less tax. Pronoun: Storage is less of a problem than it used to be. You’d better be ready in less than an hour. It’s a city with a population of less than 200,000. Suffix: Diet food is usually flavorless. It’s suggested that one eat chicken skinless. I was lost in the fathomless depths of the story. He was tireless in his attempt to reach the top.
Derivatives:
Adjective, Determiner, Pronoun: few Noun: few Plural noun: the few	Adverb: least
History of the Word:
Old English fēawe and fēawa are from an Indo-European root shared by the Latin paucus and the Greek pauros meaning small.	Old English lǣssa, is of Germanic origin and related to the Old Frisian lēssa, from an Indo-European root shared by the Greek loisthos meaning last.

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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Resources for Fewer versus Less

Apple Dictionary.com

Fogarty, Mignon. “Less versus Fewer.” Quick and Dirty Tips.com. 30 Jan 2015. Accessed n.d. <https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/less-versus-fewer/>. There are some nice examples and tips to tell the difference between countable nouns (fewer) and mass nouns (less).

Karen’s Linguistic Issues

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