单词few可以被用作名词和形容词。此类用法列举如下。
名词
- A few of my friends came to my house last night.
- It has been conjectured that there are many species that possess this feature, but few have been found.
形容词
- Despite intensive investigation, there are few studies that find a link between deregulation and diversification in this context.
关于这两种用法有两点值得考虑。第一个涉及到不同的语义。如在上述例句中看到的，a few是several的同义词。而few单独表达的是相似的意义，但有着更明确地含义，表示正在讨论的事物数量小。因此，它本质上与a small number of 有着同样的含义。尽管few可以被自然地单独用于任何语境下，而从会话到学术论文，a few则非常口语化，不适用于正式文章书写中。以下的一些表达方式可以在更正式的语境下用于代替a few：a small number, several, some, a fraction, a small fraction, a minority, a small minority.
