How are those completely different meanings?

by Anonymous 12 years ago

"he has a few friends" seems like only having a few friends is his preference. "he has few friends" makes it seem like nobody likes him.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

but saying "he has few friends" means he DOES have friends but few of them and saying "he has a few friends" means he has friends but only a few of them

by Anonymous 12 years ago

they both literally mean the same thing, yeah, but you typically hear each in the above contexts.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I disagree, hearing 'he has a few friends' doesn't sound anything like he carefully chooses his friend. Maybe if you said 'close friends', but otherwise I'm not seeing your meaning here. I'll agree the last one sounds a tad harsher, but really saying they have completely different meanings seems like an exaggeration.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

and if you add a different word and make it "he has few cactus friends" holy crap it's way different now

by Anonymous 12 years ago

letters as well ''She has few cactus friends''

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I always thought of it as "he has a few friends" meaning that he has an adequate amount of friends, but "he has few friends" meaning that he has a remarkably little amount of friends.

by Anonymous 12 years ago