"I will think fewer of you"

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A relative's new refrigerator magnet:

Some relevant past posts:

"Less than three years: A policy revision", 1/4/2007
"10 English majors or less", 8/10/2008
"More on less", 8/31/2008
"Still more on less", 9/4/2008
"Eleven mistakes about grammar mistakes", 3/10/2010
"Stupid less/fewer automatism at the WSJ", 12/2/2010
"Less with plural count nouns in formal usage", 12/5/2010
"The less… umm… fewer the better", 10/13/2017

Commenters may wish to explain why the phrase on the magnet is actually a mistake — and also one that never occurs naturally.

That last post includes a picture worth displaying again:



7 Comments

  1. Terry K. said,

    October 1, 2024 @ 8:01 pm

    Here (in the first graphic), the "less" that should be there is an adverb. And "fewer" can't be an adverb. It's not just the wrong meaning, but ungrammatical.

    Regarding "3 years or fewer", it strikes me that while years are countable, time is not. Unless whole years are the only option (or rounding to whole years), it really doesn't work, meaning-wise.

  2. J.M.G.N. said,

    October 2, 2024 @ 2:01 am

    @Terry

    Then, *"less decades/decennia" ?

  3. Coby said,

    October 2, 2024 @ 8:10 am

    I can see "fewer years", for example, in discussing how many years it takes for a tree to bear fruit.

  4. Terry K. said,

    October 2, 2024 @ 9:10 am

    @J.M.G.N.
    Then, *"less decades/decennia" ?

    Depends on the meaning. That construction, it seems to me, is more likely to be used in situations of actually counting years. Where fewer makes sense.

    @Coby.

    I like your example.

  5. Yves Rehbein said,

    October 2, 2024 @ 9:49 am

    Challenge accepted. Grammar, Logic and Math don't go well together. The most maths I've seen is stochastic.

    So what I think is going on here is that a ye prefix assimilated into the velar of think, so that less would be a participle adjective (or adverb, as Terry said), you know? Genau. That might reflect its root in comon with common, κοινός, mean, the common man, a mean human being. This implies *collos, that might very well be cūlus, just as κοινός became confused with κύον in so-called dog Latin, obviously. Alas (!) Don Knut's winged words apply: "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

    Turns out læs "smaller" does not need grade.

    Otherwise I'd accept think lesser, since that's what the joke is about.

  6. David Morris said,

    October 2, 2024 @ 4:22 pm

    I could care fewer each day until I can't care fewer any more.

  7. AntC said,

    October 3, 2024 @ 8:15 am

    @DM I couldn't care fewer how many X's you don't give.

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