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I have a sentence as follows:

You may need as many as five commands to draw a simple triangle when using the basic layer.

My question is:

Is the phrase "as many as" crucial ? Will the meaning change if I remove it from the sentence?

Does the phrase mean "at most"?

apaderno
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I believe it means "at most," with an emphasis being that the number is undesirably large.

Claudiu
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    "Up to..." means the same, but without this emphasis. – Steve Melnikoff Dec 07 '10 at 17:35
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    @Tsuyoshi Ito: your understanding of this phrase appears flawed. "As many as five" means that, ok, so sometimes you can do it with 3 commands, or even a single command in the right circumstances, but there are certain significant situations where it takes 5 friggin' commands do to this simple task. The range of possible values is 1 to 5, and the statement is remarking on the fact that 5 is way too high. – Marthaª Dec 07 '10 at 22:17
  • @Martha: It seems to me that you are conflating the meaning conveyed by “as many as” and the meaning conveyed by “may” in the quotation. – Tsuyoshi Ito Dec 07 '10 at 22:22
  • @Tsuyoshi Ito: eh? Exactly how do you believe "may" alters the meaning of "as many as"? – Marthaª Dec 07 '10 at 22:31
  • @Martha: Well, even if you think I am wrong, you should be able to understand what I meant by the previous comment. Anyway, my understanding is: “as many as five” = five (which is surprisingly large). “You may need as many as five commands” = you sometimes need five commands (which is surprisingly many) although in some circumstances you can do it with fewer than five commands. It refers to the range only because it is used with “may.” – Tsuyoshi Ito Dec 07 '10 at 22:44
  • @Tsuyoshi Ito: A counter example: He slaughtered as many as five animals per day. In this example, he need not have killed 5 every day, but that would have been the most killed. – Dusty Dec 07 '10 at 22:47
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    @Tsuyoshi Ito: as @Dusty just demonstrated, your understanding of "as many as" is incorrect. It does not mean equal, but less than or equal to this large number. – Marthaª Dec 07 '10 at 22:51
  • @Dusty: Thank you for the counterexample. I admit that “as many as” sometimes refers to the highest end of a range. I am still unconvinced that it always means that way. From COCA: “It was only the 15th game in club history with as many as six errors” (AP, 2010). (This refers to a baseball game in MLB, and six errors in one game is exceptionally bad.) The meaning of this sentence changes completely if you replace “as many as” by “at most” even if you ignore the difference of the emphasis. – Tsuyoshi Ito Dec 07 '10 at 23:10
  • I removed my first comment, which was incorrect as Dusty demonstrated (thanks!). – Tsuyoshi Ito Dec 07 '10 at 23:15
  • @Tsuyoshi: that's a really interesting example. I'm not sure I've seen that usage before. In that context, I'm actually curious if they mean that they've had 15 games with 6 or more errors as opposed to exactly 6. (The next sentence is that their record is 7 errors in one game which occurred 4 times. I'd make an educated guess that those 4 are included in the 15, but that is ambiguous to me) – Dusty Dec 07 '10 at 23:30
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If your intention is to convey how much effort it takes to draw a simple triangle, there's no better phrase than "as many as".

However, if you want to imply how short & straightforward the task is, then you may use:

You need no more than five commands to draw a simple triangle when using the basic layer.

As answered by Claudiu & Steve, "at most" is valid in the second case and "up to" is valid in both cases.

  • I do not think it always means no more than. The usual usage is that the quantity stated would be high against the average and an estimated high-water mark, not an absolute. – Orbling Dec 07 '10 at 20:41
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The phrase "as many as" expresses a lower limit, but not a specific quantity within the range. Without any qualifying phrase in addition to it, such as "at most" or "but not more than", the phrase indicates amounts equal to or greater than the stated quantity. For example, if I were to say, "I have as many as five coins in my pocket," if I had only four coins, the statement would be false. If, however, I had five or more coins, the statement's parameters would be met.

Joseph Lucci
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  • Er...I don't think that's quite right; if I have as many as five coins in my pocket, I have not more than five coins. If I had five or more coins, I'd have at least five coins... – Brian Hooper May 31 '11 at 21:18
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Added: As Martha and Dusty pointed out, the usage explained in this answer seems to be either incorrect or at best uncommon (thank you for your patience, Martha and Dusty).

The phrase “as many as five” refers to five things with an emphasis on how large the number is. It does not mean “at most five” (= “five or fewer”).

The opposite of “as many as five” is “as few as five.” While it also refers to five things, it has an emphasis on how small the number is, and has the same meaning as “only five.” I think that “as few as five,” “only five” and “no more than five” (as in crypto’s answer) mean almost the same things.

Community
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Tsuyoshi Ito
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    "As few as five" means that 5 is the lower extreme of the possible range of values. "No more than five" means that 5 is the upper extreme. So no, they don't mean almost the same thing at all. – Marthaª Dec 07 '10 at 21:44
  • @Martha: Interesting. I do not think that I have ever seen “as few as five” meaning that five is a lower bound. As I wrote in this answer, the phrases “as many as five” and “as few as five” both refer to five, no more, no less. – Tsuyoshi Ito Dec 07 '10 at 21:55
  • I second Martha's comment. For example, "They survived on as few as 3 eggs a week" would mean that some weeks they only had 3, but other weeks they had more. "as few as" and "as many as" set bounds, not strict equalities. – Dusty Dec 07 '10 at 22:06
  • @Dusty: Thank you for the explanation (and for the other reply on my comment on Claudiu’s answer). While I admit that “as many/few as” sometimes refers to an upper/lower bound, I still think that it is not always the case, and I defend my answer as in the case of this question, the phrase can be interpreted in both ways. – Tsuyoshi Ito Dec 07 '10 at 23:21