Less
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Less is a grammatical particle in the English language, functioning as an adverb that modifies comparatives.
Usage prescriptionists have ordained that less is not to be used with count nouns, and that only the word fewer must be used with things that can be counted; less is used only among mass nouns and things that can be measured other than by counting.
In actual usage, while fewer is confined to count nouns and lower numbers, less can refer to count nouns as well. Less applies to countable things such as miles, sums of money, units of time, and all statistical data, which are typically thought of as amounts rather than quanta. The phrase less than is of frequent use, and fewer is seldom if ever used in it:
- This costs less than twenty dollars!
is correct, idiomatic English, while:
- *This costs fewer than twenty dollars!
is a solecism, and offends against idiom.
less(1) is a Unix command that receives a textual input and passes it as output one screenful a time. It is similar to more, but allows greater flexibility (you can move backward in the text as well as forward) and does not have to read the whole text before displaying it, like common text editors do.fr:Moins