EDIT: you guys have dug up some truly horrible pisstakes :D Thank you for those.
To the serious folk - relax a little. This is Mildly Infuriating, not I'm dying if this doesn't stop. As a non-native speaker I was taught a certain way to use the language. The rules were not written down by me, nor the teachers - it was done by the native folk. Peace!
Hmmm - maybe I should be using “fewer” less times than I should be using “less” fewer times…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So what you’re saying is we need to use ‘less’ fewer?
Less is more unless fewer less is no more no less.
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Bash says that the
fewercommand can’t be found…lessismore, though!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/RGWiTvYZR_w
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I couldn’t give fewer of a shit
common usage is not the enemy
Confusion is the enemy of communication. Clarity of language is critical to being understood. Correctly using “fewer” and “less” could theoretically provide context clues about what type of thing you’re counting, but you will be understood irregardless of which word you choose to use.
irregardless
You did that on purpose didn’t you.
For all intents and purposes this comment triggered me
The topic peaked my interest.
The thing I find interesting is how the mixing of less and fewer, is broadly accepted, whereas nobody tends to use ‘much’ and ‘many’ interchangeably.
I’m not quite sure why much/many is do conserved when fewer/less isn’t.
That’s kinda easy though because much fewer people use less then many.
Less then many?
So to use that in a sentence “I have less many testicles than the average cat”
*then
*than
I like to use “not much” instead of “not many” whenever I can.
gonna start saying “not many” when people ask me “what’s up”
People using “fewer” instead of “less” would be far more infuriating. 'cause you know they know better and are trying to get a rise out of you :)
I couldn’t care fewer
I feel like that could happen in the same way that “you and I” became a common overcorrection.
[malix@derp ~]$ fewer .bashrc bash: fewer: command not found:(
What would
" $ touch fewer
$ fewer .bashrc " Do?basically nothing/same “command not found”.
“fewer” doesn’t have execute rights, nor does the next command use the fewer in current directory. But, taking all that into account and “doing it right…ish”:
$ touch fewer $ chmod +x fewer $ ./fewer .bashrc #it outputs nothing, it's an empty script
$alias fewer = ‘less’
My pet peeve is people using
lesswhen they should be usingmoreNah, I like my VIM keys
The right answer is to use bat
Honestly you have to be able to switch caring about that stuff off, when you want to, otherwise knowing any of these rules is more a curse than a blessing.
Less people should be using “less” instead of “fewer”. 😜
No no, you got that wrong.
Less people should be using “fewer” instead of “fewer”. 😜
Less people should be using “😜” instead of “fewer”. 😜
I couldn’t care fewer.
@cdf12345 if you really want to infuriate people that should be “I could care fewer.”
*you’re
Bastard stole my line
Using less what?
Totally agree. I need to bite my tongue when I hear it.
Also see: ‘Very unique’ And ‘jealous’ when they mean ‘envious’.
Very unique was originally an insult veiled as an unintentionally incorrect usage of the expression. The hidden meaning could be explained as “I think it’s retarded but I don’t want to say that in public.”
Source: chick movies.
As for Jealous vs Envious. Are you sure it isn’t merely your perception that’s mistaking the use?
I know I tend to confuse the two because one wants something that resembles what you have and the other wants what you have directly.
So the perception of those involved can mix up the two concepts in this regard.Jealous vs envious is super common to misuse as I did for years because envious seems ‘old fashioned’ these days.
‘Very unique’ is used widely but I doubt your attribution or source. It’s just a common sloppy lack of rigour in meaning.
@Lath the way to remember is the phrase “jealous husband”.
Obviously he doesn’t just want to have a wife (he’s already a husband), he specifically wants his own wife to be talking with him not some other guy.
Your post is fewer than 60 minutes old.
Arguably, that is correct: “minute” is a countable noun, so should take “fewer” as a modifier.
Yeah it is grammatically correct but most people would say “less than 5 minutes ago” or “less than 50 seconds”, instead of using “fewer than”.
Minutes may be countable but time itself isn’t, I’d say. Generally applies to units: You can certainly count litres but it’s still “less than five litres”, at least when talking about a volume say left in a tank as opposed to things that come in individual 1l containers. The space between that (e.g. 500ml or 1.5l containers) is fuzzy.
Yeah the inconsistencies are interesting.
Is it because of the “than”? Do we just not like saying “fewer than”? Because it wouldn’t offend my ear to hear “we need less than 5 chairs”, but “we need less chairs” is outrageous to me, (for less than however many chairs it takes for them to become dequantized) [I did it again there, did you notice?]
Or maybe it’s to do with the minutes being a quantization of something continuous, whereas usually we deal with the transition the other way.
“couches vs. furniture” couches are discrete, furniture is discrete things as a collective.
“time vs minutes” time is continuous, minutes are a quantization of it. That is a difference compared to couches/ furniture. How do we talk about other quantizations of continuous?
Distance: how far is it? Less than 5 miles. Maybe it’s an acknowledgement of the fact that we talk about miles but inherently understand that distance isn’t countable.
Oops that used “than” again. Uhhh… “the battery in my electric car is degraded so I get 10 less miles per charge”. Hmm I’m not sure if that sounds right…
Or maybe it’s to do with the minutes being a quantization of something continuous, whereas usually we deal with the transition the other way.
I think this is correct.
Suppose she has a 4-gallon bucket, 3/4 filled. She has “less than 4 gallons.”
Contrast with a milk crate, which normally holds 4 jugs of milk, but it, too is only 3/4 filled. Same liquid volume of milk but now I would say that she has “fewer than 4 gallons”, because the milk now comes in discrete units.
It might have to do with grouping. Use less for one lump, use fewer for individual count.
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