Talk:little

Little as a noun

Little simply cannot be a noun in English. I've just deleted a section that looks like this:

===Noun===
little
#a small amount
#:Little did I know about mountain climbing before I set off.

====Translations====
*Finnish: vähäinen määrä
*Swedish: lite

This is in fact just the adjective being used without a noun, and the word lite in Swedish is also an adjective. --Krun 23:49, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

That example was indeed incorrect, but: He knows little about British history? Every little helps? These are either nouns, or maybe bare determiners (you can't say *my little, *one little, *two littles). In any case, the current entry doesn't account for them. CapnPrep 23:58, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

A "bare determiner" is a pronoun. And an adjective used without a noun is a noun. "Little" in Little did I know is either a pronoun or noun. I think it's a pronoun.

Little as a determiner

The third adjective sense: trifling, negligable It's of little importance. is actually a determiner, not an adjective. However, when I tried to make that change, there were some issues WRT to the order of entries and an admin reverted the change.--BrettR 15:06, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Aren't the examples actually not just examples of the "small in amount/not much" sense? It's only because it's paired with "importance" that the sentence there means "it's trivial". Would a better example not be something like "it's the little things in life"? --84.246.201.101 09:43, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Bug in SAMPA formatter

The SAMPA notation for syllabic 'l' is /l=/. When presented with a final syllabic 'l', as in "little" (/"lItl=/), Wiktionary's SAMPA formatter gets confused and displays "{{{l}}}". How do I fix this?

Use an escape sequence such as = or specify the parameter you're assigning, e.g. {{X-SAMPA|1=/"lItl=/}} → Template:X-SAMPA. (It's not a bug per se. "=" has a special meaning in template calls; it tells it you're naming a parameter. You're telling the template to give the parameter /"litl the value /, but the template is not instructed how to display arbitrary parameters.) —Muke Tever 00:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! AndreasWittenstein 19:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

For future reference, escape sequences should generally not be used unless there is no alternative as they make the source text harder to read. Thryduulf 02:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

X-SAMPA is being phased out completely anyway. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:07, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

RFC discussion: November–December 2014

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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little

Some — I suspect all — of the quotations sub ===Adverb=== are attached to the wrong sense. But I seek others' input.​—msh210℠ (talk) 05:06, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

@Msh210   I think you're right about the first and the third quotes, but I think the second is in the right place. I've added a link to the second quote's chapter online, and you can check the sense in the quote's context. I fancy it'll be alright for me to shift the two misplaced quotes, and clear the request template away. Thanks for noticing the error! — ReidAA (talk) 09:52, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks.​—msh210℠ (talk) 04:50, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

not often 2. hardly

adverb 
on rare occasions
2. hardly or not at all
Microsoft® Encarta® 2009

--Backinstadiums (talk) 17:52, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

so little

We have an entry for so much but not for so little --Backinstadiums (talk) 20:05, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Inflections of 'little'

(adv):
less adv comparative (When talking about amount) 
lesser adv comparative (To modify an adjective—e.g. "That is a little-known work of art, but this is an even lesser-known one.") 
least adv superlative 
(adj): 
littler adj comparative (For size or age—e.g."That tree is little, but the tree next to it is even littler.") 
littlest adj superlative (For size or age—e.g. "Theo is the littlest of my three little brothers.") 
less adj comparative (For amount—e.g. "I have little money. Certainly less money than him.") 
lesser adj comparative (For degree or intensity—e.g. "She has little love for him. Certainly, her love for him is lesser than her love for her mother.") 
least adj superlative (For amount—e.g. "I have little money, but Jim is the one who has least money out of all of us.")
https://www.wordreference.com/definition/little

--Backinstadiums (talk) 00:40, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

littles (plural only)

However littles reads (plural only), which one is correct then? --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:42, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

A little of water spilled

What's wrong with A little of water (spilled)? --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:43, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

quite a little

Should quite a little (a considerable amount) be an idiom, or SoP? --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:17, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

quite a few, quite a bit --Backinstadiums (talk) 14:08, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

1. Not much

This meaning is a synonym of a little, isn't it? If so, I'll add it in the definition--Backinstadiums (talk) 17:01, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Noun: little vs. a little

What is the best approach to differentiate the nominal meaning of little from a little --Backinstadiums (talk) 20:20, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

You need to add a if it's preceded by only, as in I only ate a little soup and a few apples Compare also not a little --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:08, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

She was more than a little shaken (= extremely shaken) by the experience. --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:43, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

contemptibly small, petty, mean, etc., or so considered

Filthy little political tricks --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:46, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

adv. not at all (used before a verb)

He little knows what awaits him.

Is it always so? --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:48, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

"Big" and "Little" referring to companies or organisations

e.g. big pharma, little science, or the Little Steel strike. Does this merit a sense somehow? I mean, we wouldn't talk about "large pharma" or (probably) "small science". Equinox ◑ 00:49, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Probably. I see we have "(of an industry or other field, often capitalized) Thought to have undue influence." at big, though I wonder if this is lacking detail (doesn't "Big Pharma"/"Big Steel" evoke not only undue influence but large size or valuation? when Breitbart exec Steve Bannon was Trump's strategist, Breitbart may have had undue influence, but would people call it "Big Media" compared to the AP?).
How many phrases use "little" / "small" in this sense besides "little science" / "small science"? A def based on how it's used in "small science" ("conducted by individuals") would be different from one based on "Little Steel" ("belonging to the nation's 100 most massive employers which are however smaller than one supermassive one"). - -sche (discuss) 02:13, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

(Grrr, "thought to have" is the weasel words, like defining "idiot" as "a person considered stupid". It means "having influence" or "being stupid", and any inaccuracy is a function of the speaker and context, not the word.) I agree about size/influence; Breitbart for example would pride itself on not being the mainstream, and presumably you can't be non-mainstream but bigger than the mainstream. You can find "little pharma". I have trouble thinking of other promising search terms, to be honest. "Little journalism" sounded good but there ain't much. Equinox ◑ 02:18, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I took a stab at expanding the sense at big and adding a sense at little. It probably needs more work, but it's a start. - -sche (discuss) 01:22, 15 October 2021 (UTC)