Less and less

Definition

less / les / indef det, indef pron ~ (sth) (than…) (က) ( det ) နည္းနည္း။ အနည္းငယ္။ စိုးစဥ္း။ ေလ်ာ့ေလ်ာ့။ မမ်ား။ less butter / time /significance ❍ I received much/ considerably / slightly / rather / a lot less money than the others did. ❍ He was advised to smoke fewer cigarettes and drink less beer. ❍ MUCH 1 (ခ) ( pron ) မ…သေလာက္။ ေအာက္။ ေလ်ာ့ေလ်ာ့။ ေပ်ာ့ေပ်ာ့။ He has less to worry about now. ❍ It is less of a problem than I’d expected. ❍ It’ll take less than an hour to get there. ❍ The receptionist was less than (ie not at all) helpful when we arrived. (ဂ) ေအာက္။ We’ll be there in less than no time (ie very soon). တို႔မၾကာခင္ ေရာက္ေတာ့မွာပါ။ adv ~ (than…) နည္းနည္း။ မမ်ား၊ မရိွစသည္။ less colourful / expensive / likely / intelligent / successful ❍ less often / awkwardly / enthusiastically ❍ I read much less now than I used to. ❍ No less important is the work of the European Commission. prep ေလ်ာ့၍။ MINUS : He earns K 20000 a week less K 60 income tax. a monthly salary of $ 450, less tax and insurance ❍ send a cheque for the catalogue price, less 10% discount. ❏ any (the) less [ IDM ] (used after not ) (မ)ေလ်ာ့ဘဲ။ She wasn’t any (the) less happy for (ie She was perfectly happy at) being on her own. ❏ even / much / still less [ IDM ] …မေျပာနဲ႔ေတာ့။ … ေဝးေရာ။ No explanation was offered, still less an apology. ❍ He’s too shy to ask a stranger the time, still less speak to a room full of people. ❏ less and less [ IDM ] ေလ်ာ့၍ေလ်ာ့၍။ နည္း၍နည္း၍။ ပို၍ပို၍။ She found the job less and less attractive. ❍ As time passed, she saw less and less of her sisters. ❏ no less [ IDM ] ၁။ (အံ့ဩျခင္းျပပုဒ္အျဖစ္) အျခားမဟုတ္။ အျခားဟုတ္႐ိုးလား။ She’s having lunch with the Chairman of the Board, no less. ❍ He was brooding about the meaning of his life, no less. ❏ no less than… [ IDM ] … ထက္မနည္း။ … ေတာင္။ We won no less than 3 of the prizes in the raffle. -less / -lǝs / suff (ကင္းမဲ့ျခင္းျပ နာမ္ပုဒ္ေနာက္ဆက္)။ treeless ❍ meaningless. ❍ INVALUABLE ❏ -lessly (forming advs ) ကင္းမဲ့လ်က္။ hopelessly. ❏ -lessness (forming uncountable ns ) ကင္းမဲ့မႈ။ helplessness.

Examples

1. You should eat less and exercise more.
2. The industry operates with less government control these days.
3. [less...than] : The new Ford is designed to use less fuel than earlier models.
4. The workers earn less now than they did ten years ago.
5. [less of] : I aim to spend less of my time travelling.
6. [a little/bit less] : I wish you’d do a bit less talking and a bit more work.
7. [much/a lot/far less] : Payments will be a lot less than many people were expecting.
8. There is far less trouble in the region now than there has ever been.
9. Farmers are having to work with older
10. less efficient equipment.
11. [less...than] : Many women are involved in the movement
12. but less publicly than men.
13. [much/a lot/far less] : The homework was a lot less difficult than I expected.
14. [less of a] : Getting there is less of a problem if you have a car.
15. We’ve been trying to use the telephone less this month to keep costs down.
16. [less than] : We talk a lot less than we used to.
17. [less...than] : My husband worries about things less than I do.
18. [not...any (the) less] : Even after she told me
19. I didn’t respect her any less.
20. We made £2
21. 000 profit on the deal
22. less tax.
23. [less...than] : His statement was less an apology than a confession.
24. The problem may be less a social issue than a legal one.