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Lack vs Few - What's the difference?

lack | few |

As a verb lack

is .

As a proper noun few is

(british) the pilots who fought in the battle of britain.

lack

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • (obsolete) A defect or failing; moral or spiritual degeneracy.
  • *
    • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1 , passage=In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts, […], and therefore my lack of detection of his promise may in some degree be pardoned.}}
  • A deficiency or need (of something desirable or necessary); an absence, want.
  • * Shakespeare
    • Let his lack of years be no impediment.
  • * 1994 , (Green Day),
    • I went to a shrink, to analyze my dreams. He said it's lack of sex that's bringing me down.''
  • * {{quote-news, year=2012, date=September 7, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport
    • , title= Moldova 0-5 England , passage=If Moldova harboured even the slightest hopes of pulling off a comeback that would have bordered on miraculous given their lack of quality, they were snuffed out 13 minutes before the break when Oxlade-Chamberlain picked his way through midfield before releasing Defoe for a finish that should have been dealt with more convincingly by Namasco at his near post.}}

    Antonyms

    * glut * surplus

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To be without, to need, to require.
    • My life lacks excitement.
  • To be short (of'' or ''for something).
    • He'll never lack for company while he's got all that money.
  • * Shakespeare
    • What hour now? I think it lacks of twelve.
  • To be in want.
  • * Bible, Psalms xxxiv. 10
    • The young lions do lack , and suffer hunger.

    Related terms

    * lackluster

    Anagrams

    * ----

    few

    English

    Determiner

  • (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= 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.]
  • (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.
    • 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.
  • (meteorology, of rainfall with regard to a location) (US?) Having a 10 percent chance of measurable precipitation (0.01 inch); used interchangeably with isolated.

    • 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

    * many

    Derived terms

    * a few * quite a few

    Related terms

    * paucity * poor

    Pronoun

    (English Pronouns)
  • Few people, few things.
    • Many are called, but few are chosen.

    Antonyms

    * many

    References

    * Meteorology (both senses) *: NOAA Glossary: f

    Statistics

    * 200 English basic words English indefinite pronouns 1000 English basic words