Few realize brownstone's started as a tiny family business

The meaning of FEW is not many persons or things. How to use few in a sentence. (A) little and (a) few are quantifiers meaning ‘some’. Little and few have negative meanings. We use them to mean ‘not as much as may be expected or wished for’. … Few and a few are both used in front of nouns, but they do not have the same meaning. You use a few simply to show that you are talking about a small number of people or things. Few is used with plural nouns only; its synonymous counterpart little is used with uncountable nouns. Although indefinite in nature, a few is usually more than two (two often being referred to as "a couple of"), and less than "several". When few is used with a noun, the noun is plural: few speakers; a few speakers; quite a few speakers. Note also the slight difference in meaning between few and a few.

Learn the meaning of Few with clear definitions and helpful usage examples. In many situations, we can choose to use 'a little' or 'little' (when using an uncountable noun) or 'a few' or 'few' (when using a plural countable noun). They have slightly different meanings. Few is a word for a small, non-specific number. A few is somewhere between a couple and a whole bunch. When you say you're going to have a few fries, you'd better not eat the whole order — a few is a tiny number. It takes more than a few people to play basketball, though they could probably play two-on-two.