This is in response to Ogedei's "a few" 5 March 2007, prey4wind's "Quite a few" 5 March 2007, and I's "Several" 6 March 2007 posted on The English Forum. I touched a bit upon the quantification of the words "few, several, many, and some," in an article in The Korea Times' Thoughts of The Times Monday, August 1, 2005 titled English Still in Stage of Mixture. The following is an extraction:
...I toss up for examination the following (and I do not say it shall have shaping power): as the number one (1) has the place of being a "single unit," and the number two (2) has its place as a "couple" (of), then I submit three (3), four (4), five (5), or six (6) as a "few;" and seven through eleven (7-11) as "several," as twelve (12) is a "dozen" in its own right; all the "teens," i.e., thirteen through nineteen (13-19) would be designated as "many," for twenty (20) is a "score" in its own right. Why did I assign the "teen" numbers to "many?"
Because, we have recorded around the year 1918 the slang word "umpteen," which is often directed toward teenagers (adolescents in their "teens") as in "I've told you for the umpteenth time ... no!, don't bother me, don't ask me again, don't use that word again, etc." My rhyme and reason here may be misguided, nevertheless, I offer it for the nonce.
What makes a kink in my pet theory and throws it out of kilter is the qualifier or quantifier word "some," among others.
My resource tells me that "some" is "being of a certain unspecified (but often considerable) number or quantity."
There's something about the word that seems paradoxical; it never really tells you how much or how many.
You see, if you have a bushel of apples and tell me to "Have some apples;" I know you don't mean all of them, but, do I take a couple, or a few, or several, or a dozen, or many, etc.? Should you tell me "Have some apples, and then some" (and more than that), I still wouldn't know the number of apples to freely take. If only you would have said, "Take a handful," that would have settled the matter!
I thought I was making some headway with my definitions until my dictionary told me that "several" was "an indefinite number more than two but fewer than many."
Even though my dictionary says "many is the simple, common word implying a relatively large number of units," it too seems ambiguous and appears many-sided. In final analysis, there seems to be no limits to infringement as words encroach on each other's territory.
Should you think my invention not specious, but plausible, then I challenge you to work with the variations in countability for "lots, oodles, plenty, scads (an Americanism), tons, numerous (although my dictionary says it is "a more formal equivalent for many"), etc.
A gross or dozen dozen is a given. A jillion or zillion is innumerable, however, we can guess it approaches a googol. Notwithstanding, out of the army of quantifying words, one or two I like most of all is a "baker's dozen," and that's not one too many!
...We must be apprised of all references having independent development and we must be circumspective in the use thereof, and realize that linguists and lexicographers, etc. debate and on occasion end up going down blind alleys.
