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mall portion of units or individuals constituing a whole; often, by ellipsis of a noun, a few people. "Are not my days few" Job x. 20. Few know and fewer care. Proverb.

Fuel. [Obs.] Hooker.

See Fumet. [Obs.] B. Jonson.

The state of being few; smallness of number; paucity. Shak.

Formerly a chancery officer who fitted wax for sealing writs and other documents.

The cudweed (Gnaphalium), used to prevent or cure chafing.

e to rest, -- instituted by William the Conqueror; also, the bell itself. He begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock. Shak. The village curfew, as it tolled profound. Campbell.

Feverfew.

A perennial plant (Pyrethrum, or Chrysanthemum, Parthenium) allied to camomile, having finely divided leaves and white blossoms; -- so named from its supposed febrifugal qualities.

efore a person, and commonly with at or in before a place. Let the damsel abide with us a few days. Gen. xxiv. 55.

To shorten or contract by using fewer words, yet retaining the sense; to epitomize; to condense; as, to abridge a history or dictionary.

rily, and especially from an indulgence of the passions or appetites; -- with from. Not a few abstained from voting. Macaulay. Who abstains from meat that is not gaunt Shak.

terete or vertically compressed leaf stalks, instead of the bipinnate leaves of the much fewer species of America, Africa, etc. Very few are found in temperate climates.

A genus of lizards, one of the few which feed upon vegetable substances; also, one of these lizards.

iolently; exceedingly. They on the hill, which were not yet come to blows, perceiving the fewness of their enemies, came down amain. Milton. That striping giant, ill-bred and scoffing, shouts amain. T. Parker.

Dignified, like an aged man; magisterial; venerable. [Archaic] He wrought but some few hours of the day, and then would he seem very grave and ancient. Holland.

To be or act as an equivalent, or as adequate or sufficient; as, a very few will answer.

A comprehensive maxim or principle expressed in a few words; a sharply defined sentence relating to abstract truth rather than to practical matters. The first aphorism of Hippocrates is, "Life is short, and the art is long." Fleming.

the dogs attain. Sir W. Scott. To see your trees attain to the dignity of timber. Cowper. Few boroughs had as yet attained to power such as this. J. R. Green.

assembly of hearers. Also applied by authors to their readers. Fit audience find, though few. Milton. He drew his audience upward to the sky. Dryden. Court of audience, or Audience court (Eng.), a court long since disused, belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury; also, one belonging to the Archbishop of York. Mozley…