[tlhIngan Hol] Klingon Word of the Day: puS

[Will Martin]

Whenever my wife hears someone say something like, “There are less people at this party than the last one,” she cringes and points out that one should say “fewer” instead of “less”. The proper use of “less” is something like “The left front tire on that car has less air in it than the right front tire.”

Meanwhile, the Klingon gloss of {puS} covers “few”, but not “less”. Is its meaning limited to the gloss?

In the {law’/puS} construction, we say things like {jIH tIn law’ SoH tIn puS} without implying that we are talking about more inches (in which direction?) or square inches of surface area, or cubic inches of volume, so that we could be talking about my “many” cubic inches and your “few” cubic inches. We commonly use it for “more” and “less” in the non-numeric comparison of quantity, lacking any integer value.

I mean, am I really saying, “I have many bigs; you have few bigs,”? It feels more like, “I have much bigness; you have less bigness."

Is there anywhere outside of the definition gloss where the definition includes the “less” meaning in addition to the stated “few” meaning?

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.

> On May 22, 2021, at 11:00 AM, Klingon Word of the Day <kwotd at wizage.net> wrote:
> 
> Klingon Word of the Day for Saturday, May 22, 2021
> 
> Klingon word: puS
> Part of speech: verb
> Definition: be few, be several, be a handful
> Source: TKD
> 
> 
> This Klingon Word of the Day is brought to you by qurgh (qurgh at kli.org).
> 
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