The Peasant Life

TheOneWithTheHair@lemmy.world to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 1174 points –
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*fewer holidays

I fucking swear I see this mistake every single day these days. Does no one know the difference between less and fewer anymore?!?

There's a growing amount of people (sic) who are unaware of the difference between countable and uncountable nouns. Just watch any YouTube video that happens to involve quantities of any kind. "Amount" has become the standard term. And it's similar with "less".

Isn't less a superset of fewer though?

No, fewer is for countable nouns, while less is for uncountable nouns.

However, like is often the case with the English language, there are various exceptions to the rule.

Sources:

  1. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/fewer-vs-less
  2. BBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pm-YQGFs8E

One of the definitions of Less is "Consisting of a smaller number" which feels pretty countable.

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