Few vs Litter - What's the difference?
few | litter |
(preceded by another determiner) An indefinite, but usually small, number of.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= (used alone) Not many; a small (in comparison with another number stated or implied) but somewhat indefinite number of.
(meteorology, of clouds) (US?) Obscuring one eighth to two eighths of the sky.
(meteorology, of rainfall with regard to a location) (US?) Having a 10 percent chance of measurable precipitation (0.01 inch); used interchangeably with isolated.
(countable) A platform mounted on two shafts, or a more elaborate construction, designed to be carried by two (or more) people to transport one (in luxury models sometimes more) third person(s) or (occasionally in the elaborate version) a cargo, such as a religious idol.
* Shakespeare
(countable) The offspring of a mammal born in one birth.
* D. Estrange
(uncountable) Material used as bedding for animals.
(uncountable) Collectively, items discarded on the ground.
* Jonathan Swift
(uncountable) Absorbent material used in an animal's litter tray
(uncountable) Layer of fallen leaves and similar organic matter in a forest floor.
A covering of straw for plants.
* Evelyn
To drop or throw trash without properly disposing of it (as discarding in public areas rather than trash receptacles).
* By tossing the bottle out the window, he was littering .
To strew with scattered articles.
* Jonathan Swift
To give birth to, used of animals.
* Sir Thomas Browne
* Shakespeare
To produce a litter of young.
* Macaulay
To supply (cattle etc.) with litter; to cover with litter, as the floor of a stall.
* Bishop Hacke
* Dryden
To be supplied with litter as bedding; to sleep or make one's bed in litter.
* Habington
As a determiner few
is an indefinite, but usually small, number of.As a pronoun few
is few people, few things.As a proper noun Few
is the pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain.As a noun litter is
a platform mounted on two shafts, or a more elaborate construction, designed to be carried by two (or more) people to transport one (in luxury models sometimes more) third person(s) or (occasionally in the elaborate version) a cargo, such as a religious idol.As a verb litter is
to drop or throw trash without properly disposing of it (as discarding in public areas rather than trash receptacles).few
English
Determiner
A new prescription, passage=No sooner has a [synthetic] drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one. These “legal highs” are sold for the few months it takes the authorities to identify and ban them, and then the cycle begins again.}}
- I was expecting lots of people at the party, but very few''''' (=''almost none'') ''turned up. Quite a '''few''' of them'' (=''many of them'') ''were pleasantly surprised. I don't know how many drinks I've had, but I've had a '''few . [This usage is likely ironic.]
- 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 phenomenon aloft are present--that is, not when obscuring phenomenon are surface-based, such as fog.
Usage notes
* (term) is used with plural nouns only; its synonymous counterpart (little) is used with nouns. * Although indefinite in nature, a few is usually more than two (two often being referred to as "a couple of"), and less than "several". If the sample population is say between 5 and 20, a few would mean three or four, but no more than this. However, if the population sample size were in the millions, "a few" could refer to several hundred items. In other words, few'' in this context means ''a very very small percentage but way over the 3 or 4 usually ascribed to it its use with much much smaller numbers. : (term) is grammatically affirmative but semantically negative, and it can license negative polarity items. For example, lift a finger usually cannot be used in affirmative sentences, but can be used in sentences with (term). *: He didn't lift a finger to help us. *: *He lifted a finger to help us. (ungrammatical) *: Few people lifted a finger to help us. *: *A few people lifted a finger to help us. (ungrammatical) *: *Fewer people lifted a finger to help us. (ungrammatical)Synonyms
* little (see usage)Antonyms
* manyDerived terms
* a few * quite a fewAntonyms
* manyReferences
* Meteorology (both senses) *:NOAA Glossary: f
litter
English
Noun
(wikipedia litter)- There is a litter ready; lay him in 't.
- A wolf came to a sow, and very kindly offered to take care of her litter .
- Strephon / Stole in, and took a strict survey / Of all the litter as it lay.
- Take off the litter from your kernel beds.
Synonyms
* (platform designed to carry a person or a load): palanquin, sedan chair, stretcher, cacolet * (items discarded on the ground): waste, rubbish, garbage (US), trash (US), junkDerived terms
* cat litter * litter bin * litter bug, litterbug * litter frogVerb
(en verb)- the room with volumes littered round
- We might conceive that dogs were created blind, because we observe they were littered so with us.
- The son that she did litter here, / A freckled whelp hagborn.
- A desert where the she-wolf still littered .
- Tell them how they litter their jades.
- For his ease, well littered was the floor.
- The inn where he and his horse littered .
