EDIT: you guys have dug up some truly horrible pisstakes :D Thank you for those.

To the serious folk - relax a little. This is Mildly Infuriating, not I'm dying if this doesn't stop. As a non-native speaker I was taught a certain way to use the language. The rules were not written down by me, nor the teachers - it was done by the native folk. Peace!

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
    21·
    10 months ago

    Or maybe it’s to do with the minutes being a quantization of something continuous, whereas usually we deal with the transition the other way.

    I think this is correct.

    Suppose she has a 4-gallon bucket, 3/4 filled. She has “less than 4 gallons.”

    Contrast with a milk crate, which normally holds 4 jugs of milk, but it, too is only 3/4 filled. Same liquid volume of milk but now I would say that she has “fewer than 4 gallons”, because the milk now comes in discrete units.