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I don't know what the following sentence means for sure: "The only jokes I tell are the ones that I hear from you." Does it mean that "I don't tell so much jokes and the very jokes I tell, which is little in number, are mainly those I hear from you", stressing the number, or it doesn't implicate "little in number", but rather puts "completely" instead of "mainly"? Thanks, in advance.

J. vaezi
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As a native speaker from the UK, I would interpret that as "The jokes I tell are exclusively the ones I hear from you." To infer the "little or few " meaning of only, you would need some additional quantifier, e.g. "I only tell a few jokes".

JonLarby
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  • Slightly simpler: "The few jokes I tell" does carry a connotation of not telling many jokes. But "The only jokes I tell" does not carry that connotation. – Flater Sep 28 '17 at 12:45
  • Would agree (as a UK native) with both Jon and @Flatter that the principal meaning is about where the jokes come from. However, I feel there is a degree of implying not that many about the phrase "The only ...". It's not that it couldn't be used about something that happens a lot, more that (at least in my experience) it most often gets used about something that doesn't happen too often. – TripeHound Sep 28 '17 at 13:20