Few vs Mew - What's the difference?
few | mew |
(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.
(obsolete) A gull, seagull.
* , II.xii:
(obsolete) A prison, or other place of confinement.
(obsolete) A hiding place; a secret store or den.
* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.vii:
(falconry) A cage for hawks, especially while moulting.
*, vol.I, New York, 2001, p.243:
(falconry, in the plural) A building or set of buildings where moulting birds are kept.
(obsolete) To shut away, confine, lock up.
* c. 1669 , John Donne, "Loves Warre":
* Shakespeare
* Dryden
(of a bird) To moult.
* Dryden
As a proper noun few
is (british) the pilots who fought in the battle of britain.As a noun mew is
(obsolete) a gull, seagull or mew can be (obsolete) a prison, or other place of confinement or mew can be the crying sound of a cat; a meow.As a verb mew is
(obsolete) to shut away, confine, lock up or mew can be (of a cat) to meow.As an interjection mew is
a cat's cry.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
mew
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) mewe, from (etyl) 'to roar', Old Church Slavonic (myjati) 'to mew'.Noun
(en noun)- A daungerous and detestable place, / To which nor fish nor fowle did once approch, / But yelling Meawes , with Seagulles hoarse and bace [...].
Etymology 2
From (etyl) mue, (muwe), and (etyl) .Noun
(en noun)- Ne toung did tell, ne hand these handled not, / But safe I haue them kept in secret mew , / From heauens sight, and powre of all which them pursew.
- A horse in a stable that never travels, a hawk in a mew that seldom flies, are both subject to diseases; which, left unto themselves, are most free from any such encumbrances.
Verb
(en verb)- To mew me in a Ship, is to inthrall / Mee in a prison, that weare like to fall [...].
- More pity that the eagle should be mewed .
- Close mewed in their sedans, for fear of air.
- The hawk mewed his feathers.
- Nine times the moon had mewed her horns.