How to use Few & Little

Five Minute Guide to Few and Little

Forming sentences with (a) few and (a) little

• (a) few + plural countable noun
• (a) little + uncountable noun

Using Few and Little

1. We use a few and a little to mean a small quantity or a small number.
   • I have a few friends. (a small number)
   • I have a little money. (a small amount)
2. We use few and little (without “a”) to mean “not enough”, or to give the small quantity/number a more negative meaning.
   • I have few friends. (a small number, and I wish I had more)
   • I have little money. (a small amount, and I wish I had more)
3. Few and little without “a” are quite formal. In spoken English it’ss more common to say “only a few/little” or “not much/many”.
   • Few people came to the meeting (more formal)
   • Only a few people came to the meeting (less formal)
   • Not many people came to the meeting (less formal)
4. If we use a few or a little before a pronoun or determiner, we use of.
   • A few of them went to the cinema.
   • He only kept a little of his money with him.

Few and Little in detail

What part of speech are “few” and “little”?

Few and Little are a type of determiner (a word that comes before a noun to introduce it or signal it).

Specifically, they are a type of determiner called quantifiers. Quantifiers tell us how much or how many of a noun we are talking about – in other words, they tell us about the quantity.

Sometimes we might want to talk about a large quantity of something, in which case we can use quantifiers like much and many. To talk about a moderate quantity we can use quantifiers like some and any, and to talk about a small quantity we can use few and little.

How do we use “few” and “little”?

Few and a few introduce countable nouns; little and a little introduce non-countable nouns. So why do we need one version of each with “a” and one without? Have a look at these sentences:

• I have a few friends.
• I have a little money.
• I have few friends.
• I have little money.

There’s a difference in meaning between the first two sentences and the second two. Imagine someone saying the first two sentences to you – they would probably sound quite happy and positive, as if they had a sufficient number of friends or a sufficient amount of money – not a large number or amount, but enough.

Now imagine someone saying the last two sentences to you. With these ones the person might sound sad or negative, and that’s because she is telling you that the number of friends she has, or the amount of money, is not enough for her. This is very subjective: “Not enough” for one person might be very different to “not enough” for another person.

Using few and little in their more negative sense like this, without “a”, is quite formal, and we would normally choose to say something like:

• I don’t have many friends.
• I don’t have much money.

Related grammar points

Articles
Small and little