Define "Quite"

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ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
I just used the word "quite" in a post and had one of those moments where a familiar thing suddenly seems unfamiliar. Have you ever experienced that?

I remember typing the word "comb" a few years ago and remembering that it referred to the toothed object for arranging hair, but the word just didn't look right.

Anyway, I just had that feeling about "quite" as used in the phrase "quite a few". What the heck does that actually mean? "Several few"? "Lots of few"? "More than a few few"? "Not a lot but not a few, somewhere in between"? It's a strange word with which we are all familiar, but I don't find it easy to define.
 

asterix

Comrade Member
Location
Limoges or York
It means almost a few but not quite.
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Quite is a good word. It's a qualifier isn't it? Sort of meaning the extent of something. Quite a few means a considerable few? That's all right isn't it?

I've had the unfamiliar thing happen though. Can't think with what though.
 

ASC1951

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
'exactly' or 'there you are/go, then'?
Short for 'quite right'.
 

swee'pea99

Squire
It's one of those odd words that have similar, related and potentially misleading meanings. Like when you've been ill and someone asks you how you are and you say you're better, then you have to qualify it by saying that you don't mean 'better', as in 'perfectly well again', you mean 'better', as in 'not well again, but better than I was thanks for asking'.
 
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