Confusable pair · B1
Fewer or less?
Fewer goes with things you can count: fewer cars, fewer mistakes, fewer people. Less goes with things you cannot count: less traffic, less time, less water. The useful exception is measurement: less than five miles, less than an hour, less than twenty pounds, because those are amounts rather than counts.
Which word, and why
- fewer
with countable plural nouns
A smaller number of separate things.
fewer people · fewer mistakes · fewer opportunities
- less
with uncountable nouns, and with measurements
A smaller amount of something not counted individually.
less time · less traffic · less than an hour
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