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

The case for cuts simply isn’t there at the moment, and there are likely precious few Fed voters who would even consider such a step at this point.

From Barron's • May 23, 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

Tess moves with a troop of kooky outer-borough women, leaving the musical with precious few intimate moments of thoughtful stillness.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 19, 2025

With costs rising, plus the aforementioned endowment tax, precious few universities could afford that.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 20, 2025

“The writers were against the Klan, all right, but they had precious few inside facts about it.”

From "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Steven D. Levitt