IIUC, a few means not a large number, which is ambiguous. I wonder is it valid that if a few is more than half?
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Does this answer your question? How many items are actually "a few items"? – Apr 05 '20 at 14:27
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"A few" normally implies more than one. It is a plural amount, but as you said it is deliberately ambiguous.
If you say "I ate a few biscuits" I would assume that you ate more than half a biscuit.
On the other hand you could say "half of the biscuits" meaning "half of the packet of biscuits" (or similar; it is assumed that you and your listener know what "all the biscuits" would mean in the context). If the pack contained 100 biscuits then "more than half" would not be "a few" since 50 is a large number of biscuits. By contrast if the pack only contained 5 biscuits then "more than half" could be 3 biscuits and three is a small number.
Therefore "a few" can mean more than half, if the whole is only a small number.
James K
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It means a small number - definitely fewer than half.
Kate Bunting
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1It depends on the context. If there are four people, and three of them go into a shop, then from the view of the shopkeeper, a few people come into the shop, regardless of how many wait outside. The shopkeeper won't say "oh that was more than half, a lot of people came into my shop." – Weather Vane Mar 26 '20 at 16:00
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I think "definitely fewer than half" is definitely wrong. I can think of many situations where "a few" might still be more than half of the total. "A few" could even be the full total (all of them), if the total number itself is only "a few" things. – Foogod Mar 26 '20 at 19:45