precious few

Idioms

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.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

After precious few nights out without our kids, we had willingly suspended our better judgment—only to be reminded, expensively, that there are better ways to signal how you feel.

From The Wall Street Journal

"While there are precious few universal paralogs that we know," says Goldman, "they can give us a lot of information about what life was like before the time of the last universal common ancestor."

From Science Daily

But the cracks were showing in the goals his team were conceding and now, five months on, there are precious few new images to line the walls of Liverpool's training ground.

From BBC

The party also looks to be on the verge of unveiling some Wales-specific policies and pledges, of which there are precious few.

From BBC

Long-term injuries to Alexander Isak, Giovanni Leoni and Conor Bradley have left Slot with precious few options both in defence and up front.

From Barron's

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023