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This question is related to the previous one on less-vs-fewer. I prefer using fewer instead of less when referring to discrete items. Something sounds off about less than ten people, in my opinion.

But what about the flip side? The phrase more than ten people doesn't sound quite right either. If less and more are natural antonyms, then what word relates to more the same way fewer relates to less?

Community
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I. J. Kennedy
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6 Answers6

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There is no distinction: less is to fewer as more is to more.

  • more water; less water
  • more dogs; less/fewer dogs
  • 10 items or more; 10 items or less/fewer
  • one more bell to answer; one less bell to answer
  • weighing 100 pounds more; weighing 100 pounds less
  • 500 words or more; 500 words or less
  • more than 10,000 miles; less than 10,000 miles
nohat
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    And if that doesn’t highlight the pointlessness of the less/fewer distinction, I don’t know what does. – Paul D. Waite Sep 28 '10 at 20:50
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    @Jason, see my answer to a previous question about less/fewer for why your analysis is off the mark. – nohat Sep 28 '10 at 23:48
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    @nohat Actually, if you check the New Oxford English dictionary, they are pretty clear on the rules: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/150. There are also some pretty reputable sources denoting the difference here: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/less-versus-fewer.aspx, and here: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm, and other various places in style books and all over the internet. Now this becomes a religious debate: which dictionary is right? Yours because you say it is or mine because I say it is? Remember, a dictionary is written by people who have opinions too. – Jason Sep 29 '10 at 00:31
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    @nohat, I read your answer to question 495 before asking this one. It's a good answer. You make a strong case that in real usage, there's not much difference between 'less' and 'fewer'. But some of us just can't bring ourselves to say 'less dogs'. – I. J. Kennedy Sep 29 '10 at 01:13
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    @I.J. I do fear I haven’t fully answered your question, or at least I haven’t fully made clear that I’m not claiming that there is no distinction to be made between less and fewer (there is a distinction between those words)—just that the matching superior comparator is more for both. – nohat Sep 29 '10 at 01:27
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    @nohat - interesting argument, "correct usage is decided by users of the language, not by self-appointed arbiters of correctness." "users of the language": i guess "almost every usage writer" and "flocks of english teachers" (quoted from your MW source) don't count as users of the language, nor the students learning from these people. also, by "self-appointed arbiters of correctness" do you mean, um, dictionaries? i'll give you another try if you'd like. – Jason Sep 29 '10 at 01:47
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    @Jason you misunderstand. It is not decided by what people say, such as usage writers or English teachers, but by what people do, by doing real analysis of large corpora of texts. – nohat Sep 29 '10 at 03:02
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    @slim you should send Hal David a firmly worded letter then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Less_Bell_to_Answer – nohat Dec 21 '11 at 22:16
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less is to fewer as greater is to more

dotjoe
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    Surely, "less is to fewer as more is to greater"? Even so, I can't buy this. "There are greater apples in this bowl than in the other"? Nope. Perhaps "There is a greater number of apples in this bowl than in the other"? But what an awkward construction. – jameshfisher Sep 16 '17 at 09:44
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My opinion is that, in principle, 'less' relates to uncountable nouns and 'fewer' relates to countable nouns. However, the concept in the mind of the speaker has an influence. We can say 'less than a thousand miles' because the concept in the mind of the speaker, is distance, which is not countable. Similarly, bridge players often assess the strenth of their hand by points but it does not offend me to hear 'I had less than ten points' because the concept in the mind of the speaker is strength, not points.

Barry Brown
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  • Good answer, but I think your second point needs tidying up. The 'concept in the mind of the speaker' must be the same as the concept expressed (if you are using language properly), and you could only travel ?fewer than a thousand miles if you had seven-league boots, or some other contrivance that cannot go a smaller distance than a mile. – Tim Lymington Jul 01 '12 at 23:19
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We do say "less than, greater than" but other than adding "even" we don't really change "more" to fit the noun. "We have even more people here today than yesterday" or "We have a greater number of people here today than yesterday." Those are both comparisons. If you didn't want to compare and if you didn't want to use "more" then you could potentially say "We have a great number of people." That one could be confusing though because it could be any number that your personal opinion deems as great, rather than "great" meaning a large number, so in that case it might be better to say "We have a lot of people" or "We have many people..."

QueenRiverSong
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As has been stated already, ‘more’ is the opposite of both ‘fewer’ and ‘less’. But I would like to suggest English take after their cousin Swedish (my native language).

In Swedish we have: - less/more = mindre/mer - fewer/more = färre/fler

So my suggestion is English use the word ‘flore’ to mean ‘more objects’. This of course makes it easy to confuse with ‘floor’ and to mend this, I suggest ‘floor’ gets replaced by the Swedish counterpart ‘golv’.

Håkan Andersson
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As nohat pointed out, the distinction does not exist for more. As far as I understand it, it could be said "'less' is to 'fewer' as 'much' is to 'many'" though.

Christian
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  • Late comment I know, but 'many' is an adjective, not a comparison You wouldn't say 'the are many apples in this bowl than the other' when comparing it to another bowl - the other bowl may also have many apples. Instead, you can say 'this bowl has many more apples than the other' to show there is a large difference' – cyberspy Sep 24 '21 at 08:56
  • @cyberspy that is true, it was more of a tangent maybe. – Christian Sep 24 '21 at 09:45