[Ads-l] Ever pondered this question?

[Wilson Gray]

To the extent that any thought accompanies my opinion, it's like this.
Twenty-five or so warm bodies are the max to be expected to come to my
lecture. Afterward, a colleague asks,
Q. How'd the lecture go?
A. Not bad. Few [= 3-5] people participated in the Q&A
or
A. Not bad. Several [= 7-9] people participated in the Q&A.


On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 2:33 PM Geoffrey Nathan <geoffnathan at wayne.edu>
wrote:

> Finally getting a chance to respond to this. Until Margaret and I
> discussed this I had never noticed that I had an apparently idiosyncratic
> meaning for ‘several’. I somehow picked up that it meant ‘two’. Thus, ‘a
> few’ was generally more than ‘several’. I even had my own folk etymology—if
> you cut something in half, you ‘severed’ it…
>
> I’m not making this up. But at some point, apparently I did.
>
> To quote Wilson, ‘you never know…’
>
> Geoff
>
> Geoffrey S. Nathan
> WSU Information Privacy Officer (Retired)
> Emeritus Professor, Linguistics Program
> http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
> geoffnathan at wayne.edu
>
> From: Wilson Gray<mailto:hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2020 12:00 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU<mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Ever pondered this question?
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Ever pondered this question?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> An old Army buddy, Nolan, writes about another old Army buddy, Bill:
> "He believed that _few_ was greater than _several_ and, as recently as last
> week, I've been asking people about that comparison."
>
> That is to say that he's been pondering this question since we were
> students at the Army Language School, in 1960!
>
> FWIW, IMO, _few_ is *less* than _several_.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org