[f. FEW + -NESS.] The quality or fact of being few.
1. Scantiness in number; paucity, small number.
a. 900. trans. Bæda’s Hist., III. xv. [xxi.] (1891), 222. Seo feanis nedde þara sacerda, þætte aan biscop sceolde beon ofer tuu folc.
a. 1000. Ags. Ps. ci[i]. 24. Feanisse deȝa minra seȝe me.
a. 1300. E. E. Psalter, ibid. Feunesse of mi daies.
1382. Wyclif, ibid. Fewenesse of my daȝis.
1482. Monk of Evesham (Arb.), 89. The fewnes of spyrytuall men.
1535. Stewart, Cron. Scot., I. 387.
| Quhair euir thai fled that thai suld follouit be, | |
| Trowand that tyme for feuenes thai did fle. |
1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., VII. xxxvi. (1632), 385. Seeing the fewnes of their pursuers.
1709. Hearne, Collect. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), II. 282. Spoke in vain because of the fewness of Auditors.
1859. Jephson, Brittany, ii. 9. As I stepped carelessly and lightly into the boat which was to effect our transfer, and observed the desperate anxiety of those who travelled in more dignified and encumbered style, I congratulated myself, for the first time in my life, on the fewness of the things which I possessed.
† b. Fewness and truth: in few words and truly. Obs.
1603. Shaks., Meas. for M., I. iv. 39.
| Fewnes, and truth; tis thus, | |
| Your brother, and his louer haue embrac’d. |
2. Scantiness in amount; small quantity. rare.
1861. Darwin, in Life & Lett. (1887), III. 265. This fact I look at as explaining the perfection of the contrivance by which the pollen, so important from its fewness, is carried from flower to flower.
1884. Tennyson, Becket, III. iii. Doth not the fewness of anything make the fulness of it in estimation?
