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precious few

  1. Also, precious little. Very few, very little, as in There are precious few leaves left on the trees, or We have precious little fuel left. In these idioms precious serves as an intensive, a colloquial usage dating from the first half of the 1800s.



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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

There are still subversive ideas — for one thing, this is a shark film with precious few sharks — but Byrne’s sneaky smarts have largely abandoned him.

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Southampton fans have had precious few moments to be happy about this season as they slumped to a pitiful relegation a full fortnight before Easter.

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Precious few bands can fill a stadium 52 years into their career — let alone play to an audience heavily populated by parents and their children, both generations sporting red devil horn headbands and cheering for 77-year-old singer Brian Johnson and white-haired guitar icon Angus Young, 70.

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When the crew looks out the windows, they will see the curvature of the Earth—a view that precious few humans have ever gotten to experience, Coleman pointed out: “When you see it for yourself, you realize how big the world is and how all of us are from the very same place.”

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Truly pause to consider that: Among the people in America with the most power and money and means and clout, precious few have stood up to Trump in his second term; many more of our supposed best and brightest, and certainly our best-resourced, have gotten on their knees and groveled.

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