20 APRIL 2002, Page 31

Survival of the few

From Mr Daniel Neades Sir: Dot Wordsworth asks about the connection between `few' and 'eight' (Mind your language, 13 April), following a reported claim that the word 'few' is Old English for the number eight.

I believe the connection is likely to have arisen from 1 Peter iii 20, which refers to the Genesis flood thus:

. . . which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

Indeed, my father tells of a lady at church some years ago who, because of the above passage, used to insist that 'few' could only mean 'eight'.

Daniel Neades

Cambridge