Language Arts "Less" and "fewer" are two of the words that are referred to as quantifiers, but one is used for countable nouns and the other for non-count nouns. Keep reading for more information on "less" and "fewer."

Count and Non-Count Nouns

In order to understand how the quantifiers work, we first need to have a grounding in how nouns in English work. One way of categorizing common nouns is whether they are countable or not. Count nouns have a singular and a plural form, while non-count nouns are not countable and have only one form which is treated as singular for the sake of subject-verb agreement. Don't confuse these with nouns that have two identical forms like deer, shrimp, sheep, etc. These are count nouns that may appear - to those who don't know - to only have one form.

Most common nouns are count nouns, including chair, book, car, tree, doll, penny, building, and president. It is unlikely that there would be more than one president in a given location or any call to count presidents, but that is not the point. The point is that presidents (and worlds and universes even) could be counted: they are countable. Non-count nouns include the following:

advice

bread

cheese

evidence

flour

furniture

happiness

homework

information

laundry

luggage

lumber

news

pasta

peace

rice

sugar

weather

Notice that the non-count nouns include many abstract nouns, a number of foods and liquids, and collective nouns in which the noun refers to one thing that has many elements, components, or instances.

Quantifying Count Nouns

When we wish to talk about the quantity of count nouns, we can, of course, count them. We can say:

fifteen chairs, one hundred forty-eight books, two cars, thirty-nine trees, seventeen dolls, eight pennies, five buildings, and one president.

We can also use any of the following quantifiers:

many, more, most, a few, fewer, fewest, several, enough

like this for example:

Our living room has many chairs.

We need more books for the book drive.

Two is the most cars ever parked in our lot.

I think a few trees in the backyard would add to the setting.

Do you think having fewer dolls and more stuffed animals would be a good plan?

Three pennies is the fewest I carry.

He was the architect of several buildings in downtown Tulsa.

One is enough presidents for our country!

Notice that few is among the group of quantifiers for count nouns. Few comes from the Middle English fewe from old English feawe. It is pronounced /FYOO/.

Quantifying Non-Count Nouns

When we wish to talk about the quantity of non-count nouns, we can't count them, but we can indicate amount in other ways. For one thing, we can add a count noun that names a measurement that is appropriate to the non-count noun and connect it to the non-count noun with the preposition of, like this:

fourteen measures of grain

two and a half hours of homework

three cups of sugar

a hamper full of laundry

a handful of flour

two new pieces of information

You can see that the count nouns are very specific to what is being measured and not interchangeable (at least, not sensibly interchangeable - there's nothing wrong with “a handful of laundry” or “a hamper full of sugar”: they're just rather unlikely.

A second way to quantify non-count nouns is with the following modifiers:

much, more, most, a little, less, least, enough

like this for example:

Did you receive much data?

I'm going to do some more laundry, so bring your dirty clothes down.

Which of you has the most homework?

I've got a little advice for you.

Could you please be satisfied with less software?

The least cigarette smoke is not as good as none, in my opinion.

Do you think the storm dropped enough snow for the resorts to open?

Notice that less is among the group of quantifiers for non-count nouns. Less is from the Middle English lesse and Old English laessa. It is pronounced /LEHS/.

When less is used in a phrase, such as less than, it is sometimes used before plural nouns of time, amount, or distance, as in “less than a yard to the goal line.”