Pedants' Corner suggestion: abolishing the word "fewer"

[Trills]

For the good of our blood pressure, I propose that we abolish the word "fewer" and decide to use "less" for both quantities and countable objects.

(as many people already do)

Can you think of any situation in which this would result in confusion/hilarity/misunderstandings or the like?

Or would everything be fine?

Reported.

How about getting rid of "less" instead?

• I spent fewer than £5 in Home Bargains
• I'm on fewer money now than I used to be
• That Donald Trump is a shamefewer bastard

Maybe not.

No.

If we got rid of "less" then I wouldn't be able to listen to More or Less and then I'd be :(

It could be the start of a slippery slope though.

We'd also have to get rid of 'I' and 'me' and just use 'myself' for everything.

Or replace 'have' with 'of'

It wouldn't end well ...

"Slippery slope" is one of the lamest lines of argument, especially if preceded by "could".

For increases, "more" works perfectly well for countable and continuous quantities, (more water, more ducks), so logically it would be possible to use "less" for both. But some people want to preserve this nice distinction.

And by "nice", I obviously mean the original meaning of showing or indicating very small differences; minutely accurate, as instruments not the modern sense that has crept in as we slide down the slippery slope of language change.

I like fewer. It always annoys me when Alexander Armstrong, with his Cambridge English degree, uses "less" incorrectly on Pointless.

You might want to be careful when talking about the "original" meaning of nice...

blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/10/change-in-word-meanings/

You're right, I should have said "older" meaning

I did appreciate your usage of nice in that way

Was out shopping last week with DH. We were in a superstore laid out over two floors. A tannoy announcment said, "Customers are advised that there are less queues for tills downstairs."
DH and I both shouted "Fewer!"

Interesting thought.
We could also just use 'loose' for both when a bolt isn't as tight as it should be, and to describe what happens when someone weighs less pounds than they did a month ago.

Not fewer pounds?

Nope, that's been abolished

Marklah - that's an interesting one. Did they mean that fewer queues meaning fewer tills open which would mean that you wouldn't want to go downstairs, or did they mean there was less of a queue so it would be quicker to go downstairs?

My dh is a wonderful man and teaches me grammar and English, I asked him to when we first met.
I am stupid and dyslexic the two aren't necessarily linked.
I have a terribly low IQ, struggle to retain facts and even I know when to use fewer and less.
It's one of my greatest achievements.

One day long before we were married he refused to pay for his shopping on 10 items or less aisle.

This is why one shops in Waitrose!

Amazed no-one has mentioned 1984 yet....

amicissimma

"They" used as singular has a long and distinguished history.

Emily Dickinson used it, for example

Were thee/thou ever used for all cases of second person singular, or was the situation more like French with tu/vous, where there is one word for singular+familiar, and another word for both singular+formal and plural?

Vermillion if you were to mention 1984, what would you say?

The point of Newspeak was to prevent people from talking of certain forbidden ideas, because they did not have the words with which to speak about them.

What concept or idea is lost if we replace all instances of "fewer" with "less"? This was my question. I suspect that no meaning is lost.