I remember from playing Heroes of Might and Magic that "few" is 1-4 and "several" is 5-9.

That's also how I learnt grouping as a kid !

Context: in HoMM, a turn-based strategy game, you can see wandering "armies" in the world map, but cannot see the exact number of units in these armies unless you spent some points in scouting. What you do have is a verbal description of the army ("several trolls", "lots of faeries", etc.).

And especially, you meet a <throng, swarm, zounds> of <gnolls, dragon flies, red dragons> and so on.

Those words always seemed the most fantastical to me

9 seems to high for 'several'...

Maybe 'quite a few'?

9 could be several chickens, but quite a few cows.

Heroes 3 is the law, and it says 9 is several.

There are several countries with populations over 100 million. 15 in fact.

That's so interesting. I'm an American and I would swap the meaning of few and several. In my mind, a few is usually between 3 and 5 but has an upper limit around 7. Several is anything beyond that

Agreed. I think few=3, some=4, several/many=5/6/7

Yeh, nah mate. A few is probably 3, perhaps 4, and definitely not more than several, except where several counts as 2.

And a "handful" is always five ... or more if you are going for the more american "what can be carried in the hand" definition.

Few and many also depend on context. "So few people voted last election" could mean 20,000,000 people, whereas "Many supreme court justices believe..." could refer to only four people.

“few” and “a few” are different

Another Aussie here.

I would say that "a couple" can also mean several. For example:

"Come back in a couple of days and we might have them in stock".

"Turn right where the old farmhouse used to be and they are a couple of k's down the road"

I'd interpret that as "2 days", with the implicit assumption that you can come back after 2 days and we'll still have them. A couple of km shouldn't really mean more than 3km, but obviously we don't expect anyone to go out and measure them.

As a Brit I'd pretty much agree with everything you said except switching several/few. Several is generally somewhat more than a few, at least in the UK. "I'm going away for a few days" would imply a weekend, perhaps, but several days could be up to a full week.

This is emphasised by that a few may mean 2 or even 1, whereas several should not.

Just "few" could mean 1 or 2, "a few" is at least 3 in my book.

As an Australian I agree with you. I would definitely expect several to be more than a few. Most of the time "a few" would mean 3 or 4, to me. "Several" is anywhere from 4 to ~7.

That's close to my take from the SF Bay Area too. A few days over a weekend would strongly tend towards adding either Friday or Monday but not both.

I do consider that "a couple" is imprecise and varies by context. Asking for a couple cloves of garlic while cooking could mean 2-4, especially if they are small. Asking for a couple bulbs of garlic on a shopping list could only mean 2!

For items, I think I'm also more like to shift into "half a dozen" or "dozen" than expect common ground on what "several" communicates. For days, I think I'd shift to "a week" or "N weeks" as soon as it spans a Monday-Friday work week, even if the start/end weeks are partial.

I always consider several to be in the region of about seven due to the first syllable. Few would be in the 3-5 range, several 5-10, many 10-15 and lots being more than that, but it’s also context based too. If there were 7 apples in a bowl I might say several. If there were 7 nuts it would be “a few”.

That's interesting because for me (Canadian), a few is definitely less than several. I'd expect several to be something like 5-9.

American here from mid-Atlantic east coast region. - Couple = always 2 - Few = always 3 - Several = 4-7 This might a family thing, but that's what we were taught.

Huh? 'A few' is not more than 'several'! Several could easily be 10 or more (but almost always more than 3 or 4). A few would rarely be more than 5.

I have to say I never thought there'd be that much disagreement among English speakers around the world on such basic terminology.

“Several” just means ”at least two” (plus usually also “less than a dozen” or so). For example, if you don’t quite remember if you went to a particular restaurant two times or three times, it’s still not incorrect to say “I went there several times”.

English is my second language. I agree with your definitions except that I've always thought "several" is more than "a few". Say 3-5 is a few and 5-7 is several. 5 works for both, but 4 is too few for "several" and 6 is too many for "a few".

> "Many" would normally exceed several, probably by quite a bit.

And what quantity is "quite a bit"?