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Sergey
Dear italki users, could you help me with this sentence please? "I sold it for a few hundred" Is it "a few hundred" or a "a few hundredS"? I'm sure that with "dollars" it would be "a few hundred dollars", but I'm not sure if it's still "hundred" if we omit "dollars"
Dec 16, 2020 4:35 AM
Answers · 9
3
Hundred is a singular noun when quantified. So, it's "a few hundred". - A few hundred dollars. - A few hundred pounds. - A few hundred cats. It's the same as when you use an actual number rather than few. It's hundred, not hundreds. - Five hundred dollars (not five hundreds). The only difference is that you are giving an exact number rather than an estimate. Use hundreds if you are not quantifying it. - I've got hundreds of dollars. - There's hundreds of people here And hundred when you do: - I've got a few hundred dollars. - There are a few hundred people here.
December 16, 2020
1
I don't have a grammatical explanation, but I would leave out the "s" and say "I sold it for a few hundred." If you were to say "I sold it for a few hundreds," the meaning would be the same, but it invokes the image of physical hundred dollar bills. A ten, a twenty, or a hundred are used as short-form for "a ten dollar bill," "a twenty dollar bill" etc. So, "a few hundreds" to me sounds to me like "a few hundred dollar bills." The meaning is pretty much entirely the same though.
December 16, 2020
Hundreds
December 16, 2020
Normally in casual conversation you can leave out the S. But only in the sentence you gave. It is a bit like slang.
December 16, 2020
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