Few, A Few, The Few --- Difference Explained With Lots of Examples
Most of us struggle with confusing Adjectives in English Grammar. Few / a few, little / a little are quantifiers. We use a few with plural countable nouns:
A common error that English speakers make is to confuse the quantifiers --- "FEW" with "A FEW" and vice-versa. Indeed, both expressions refer to "a small number", and therefore, speakers tend to believe that they can be used interchangeably.
That, however, is not the case. Watch this video to understand, with examples , the significant difference in the contextual usage of FEW, A FEW and also THE FEW.
I have included a number of examples to help you clearly understand this difference and to apply it in your day-to-day conversations while speaking English .
It is a very useful video not only for those who want to enhance their Spoken English Skills but also for all those aspiring to appear for English Proficiency exams like IELTS / TOEFL or competitive exams like GMAT, CAT, SSC/CGL , BANK PO/ Clerical etc.
Few, a Few—What’s the Difference?
Few is a quantifier used with plural countable nouns.
Without the article “a,” few emphasizes a small number of something.
Adding the article removes the emphasis—a few means some.
The same rule applies to little, which is used with singular uncountable nouns.
The Difference Between Few and a Few
We use the word few when we want to talk about the quantity of something. Usually, we use it when we want to talk about a small quantity:
Few members of the family leave their hometown each year.
In the sentence above, we used few to indicate that only one or two members of the family leave town—most of them stay put. However, if we were to add “a” to few, we would be saying something else:
A few members of the family leave their hometown each year.
Here we’re saying that some members of the family leave their hometown. It’s still not a lot of them, but the emphasis is on the fact on that there are some who do leave, and not that their number is small. Here’s another example:
I have many friends; I’ve known few of them since high school.
I have many friends; I’ve known a few of them since high school.
In the first sentence, we are saying that, although we have a lot of friends, we haven’t known them for very long—there’s only a small number of them we’ve known since high school. In the second sentence, we are saying that we have many friends and some of them are really old friends—we’ve known them since high school.
The exception to these usage rules is a few in the phrase quite a few. That phrase is used to indicate the opposite of a few. Quite a few means a lot:
I have many friends; I’ve known quite a few of them since high school
Summary: Few, A Few , The Few
The few is quite rare, and used only when designating a small number of things or people that have some special distinction
the few rounds left in their magazines, the few guests who escaped the fire
There's a big difference between few and a few, however.
They're directed quantifiers, and they point in opposite directions.
a few means 'a small, but still positive, number', while
few is a negative quantifier, and means 'fewer than expected, predicted, or wished'
Few governs negative polarity items like ever, producing the following pair:
Few people ever come here in the winter, but not ...
*A few people ever come here in the winter.
because a few isn't negative and therefore can't trigger ever;
as well as the following pair, which produce opposite results:
Thank heavens that few people were hurt!
Thank heavens that a few people were hurt!
because you're thanking heavens for negative versus positive injuries.