Sorry, Terminus Est, I’m really not following your reasoning here – why should the fact that the opposites use the same word mean that there’s no distinction to be made?
Although it bugs me sometimes, too, I care less about whether it should be ‘fewer’ or ‘less’ and more about the horrifying use of the word ‘then’ instead of ‘than’ in those phrases. GAH!
It seems to me that you are claiming that there needs to be a way to differentiate between mass nouns and uncountable quantities. Further, it seems to me you are claiming that using less versus fewer serves to differentiate them. I claim that less/fewer is unnecessary to differentiate between mass nouns and uncountable quantities. People can already differentiate between them well enough; witness that one has no trouble differentiating them when the opposite word “more” is applied.
Mass nouns and uncountable quantities are already distinct in and of themselves. Using less and fewer to make that distinction is simply redundant.
No, between mass nouns and countable quantities.
Yes, that is what I’m arguing.
“Well enough” isn’t exactly high praise.
Utterly irrelevant.
Well, that convinces me. :dubious:
The opposite of “clear” is “ambiguous.” Or “cloudy.” Or “congested.” Or “smudged.” Or “guilty.”
This doesn’t mean that ambiguous means the same thing as cloudy or congested or smudged or guilty.
In other words, just because two distinct words each have the same opposite doesn’t mean that they mean the same thing as each other.
And just because two distinct words are distinct doesn’t mean they can’t have the same meaning or used in the same manner.
Whatever. Clearly (heh) we don’t agree about this.
It does to me. “Minutes” are discrete spans of time, but we consider the “time” we will spend doing something to be an undivided single stretch. It’s sort of the same with money; dollars are discrete units, but when we consider a sum of money, or a price, it’s a mass.
I’m a wee bit flexible on this, but generally, fewer is for discrete, separate units that don’t easily break into fractions (radios, hot babes, tennis balls.) Less is for things you can divide into fractions with no hassle (grass seed, inches, time, liquids.)
Cans of beer in a cooler are precise units, “I had fewer than 5 beers.” Beer from a keg’s tap is more of a continuum, and one plastic cup of beer probably won’t have the same amount as the next. " I had less than 5 beers."
You have to allow for mouth feel, though. “Express lane, 12 items or fewer” is a bit lumpy. I allow a little leeway.
I was thinking of one dollar bills; “less than 3 dollars” is absolutely correct. “Fewer than 3 dollars would be wrong.”