With a total population of less than five thousand and fewer well-trai

Question

With a total population of  less than five thousand and fewer  well-trained soldiers than ever before, the army base is still unprepared for a real war.

(A) less than five thousand and fewer

(B) lower than five thousand and less

(C) lesser than five thousand and fewer

(D) fewer than five thousand and less

(E) fewer than five thousand and of fewer

tarunanandani · Answer

+1 for A .

Population is uncountable noun so we need 'less than 5000' and soldiers is countable noun so we need 'fewer than ever before'. Also, 'lesser than...' is unidiomatic so option C is incorrect. Hence, A is the right choice.

mayankrastogi10 · Answer

Option A is correct.

For the same reason as stated above.

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aomundada · Answer

Thanks for the explanation. Can you please tell me the right idioms used with less and lesser?

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tarunanandani · Answer

Hi,
Lesser is generally used as: 'Lesser of the two evils'; 'to a lesser degree/extent'.
'More or less' when used in comparisons follow the idiom: 'X more than Y' or 'X less than Y'.
You can visit this blog post from Magoosh to learn more about comparisons, More vs Greater and Less vs Fewer:  https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-comparisons-more-vs-greater-and-less-vs-fewer/

Hope this helps!

Bunuel · Answer

MANHATTAN REVIEW OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

The sentence has to do with the idiomatic usage of words for countable and noncountable nouns. Do you say: there are ‘less than five people here’ or ‘lower than five people here’, or fewer than five people here? Because you are referring to a number, five thousand in this sentence, you would use less. This is because you are essentially saying that something is less than a number. ‘Lesser than’ is incorrect. That leaves you with choice A. Note that soldiers are countable so you must use ‘fewer’ to refer to the soldiers, not ‘less’. Choice A is the correct answer.

KanishkM · Answer

Since we dont know the fixed number here, we will use less than and not fewer than

Fewer is used for countable nouns, this is the reason why it is fewer well-trained soldiers than ever before

For the second part we know that initially what was the number.

A

VerbalBot · Answer

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