precious few

Idioms  

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

There are precious few faces I want to see pop up again next season.

From BBC • Mar. 6, 2026

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 • Feb. 13, 2026

"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 • Feb. 10, 2026

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 • Jan. 25, 2026

And there they sat for a precious few minutes, Papa and his two youngest children, while the rest of the family awoke and the sounds of the city began its crescendo all around them.

From "The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street" by Karina Yan Glaser