[Ads-l] Ever pondered this question?

[Stanton McCandlish]

I have to wonder whether *few* being used to suggest *many* is universal in
English (or was, pre-Hollywood and/or pre-Internet).  It clearly originally
indicated a small quantity, but when we mean that today, we tend to modify
it for clarity (*very few*, *only a few*, *just a few*, *too few*), or use
a construction that's always interpreted one way (*Few customers showed up
on Sunday.*), because *quite a few* to mean *many* has become so common (in
the US some time before my birth, but I'm not sure about elsewhere).  I'm
in my early 50s and from the Southwest; I remember my mother (native to
that area) and my step-father (from Mississippi) both using *quite a few*
in this auto-antonymic sense, and not with any other modifier than *quite*.
It always struck me as a Southernism, like *ornery* and *yonder*, but that
might be a misperception on my part.

*Several* originally meant *separated or divided* (*Disassemble the device
into its several parts.*), and I've seen that sense in some materials up to
the late Victorian era, but can't remember seeing it in 20th-century+
publications. I'm sure it's happened, but it would come across as stilted
and might even confuse some readers.

*A [whole] lot* once mostly referred to things being sold as a group, or to
land (often with included structures on it, so essentially the same
sense).  Both of these usages survive in specialized writing, e.g. about
auctions and wholesaling, or about real estate, though I think the real
estate sense may have shifted to refer to the land property alone, apart
from things built on it, which would also make it slightly auto-antonymic.
The land sense obviously also survives in everyday usage in combined stock
phrases, like *parking lot* and *empty lot*.  The *chance, luck, fate*
sense (*drawing lots*, *one's lot in life*) apparently goes back to the
original Old English word meaning *selection* in both the senses of *decision
or choice* and *division or portion*.

*A [whole] bunch* seems to have the same *sold as a group* origin as
*a lot*, especially
in reference to produce (bunched up, like parsley).  Wiktionary is telling
me that its origin is obscure/debated as to the fine points, but it seems
to be related to various Western and Northern European terms that can mean
*bundle* or can indicate *lump, bump, or swelling*, as did the Middle
English version.  (I'm not sure how well Wiktionary has aggregated info
from other dictionaries, though.)  I thought that was weird at first, since
a bundle of things and a swelling in a thing aren't really all that
similar, but then I thought of *bunched fabric*, in which the gathering
results in a bulge. So, maybe it was originally about the bunching-up
action rather than the appearance of the result.

This all reminded me that *a bundle*, *a whole bundle*, *quite a bundle*,
and similar phrases are also used, at least dialectally, in the same
way as *quite
a few* and *a whole lot.*

An interesting side pattern emerges here, of *whole* in such constructions
shifting in meaning from *complete, entire or all-inclusive* to being
simply an intensifier (often with exaggerated *who-o-ole *stress in spoken
usage). It doesn't seem to be migrating to constructions that don't have a
similar origin (e.g., no one says **I have a whole number of chickens* or **I
have a whole few of chickens*).  *Quite a* as an intensifier is more
flexible than *a whole*, since either can be used with *lot*, *bundle*, and
*bunch*., and the former can be used in places the latter can't (*quite a
prize*, *quite a party*).  *Quite a* is a bit odd, like *such a*, in
preserving Early Modern English word order, though.  It would seem
antiquarian if it weren't stock and habitual.  It's a bit like *so
[adjective] a[n] [noun]*, which is more apt these days to be recast as *such
a[n] [adjective] [noun]*.

--
Stanton McCandlish
McCandlish Consulting
5400 Foothill Blvd Suite B
Oakland CA 94601-5516

+1 415 234 3992

https://www.linkedin.com/in/SMcCandlish

"The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate
people."
—Cornel West, author and philosopher (1953–)
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
—Isaac Asimov, biochemist and science-fiction writer (1920–1992)
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