It’s not. You can count years, but years are a unit of time and you can’t count time. Same thing with kilos or meters or liters or a bunch of other things.
It’s not a super strict rule that you can apply blindly anyway. Money is very much countable but it’s “less”.
You will see that all of those results will agree that less is almost always correct when talking about time, despite the unit. And the very rare cases where fewer is correct do not cover OP’s title.
You will also see that less is practically always correct for money. It is the single most notable exception to the countable vs uncountable rule that is mentioned very often.
edit: I’m also gonna preempt any possible “it’s not incorrect it’s just unusual” response. “Just unusual” or “just awkward” is very often as close to incorrect as certain things get in a language.
Wow. It’s rare to see someone incorrectly use fewer instead of less.
Isn’t fewer the better choice in formal English because years is a countable plural noun?
It’s not. You can count years, but years are a unit of time and you can’t count time. Same thing with kilos or meters or liters or a bunch of other things.
It’s not a super strict rule that you can apply blindly anyway. Money is very much countable but it’s “less”.
it is
wtf lmfao
I have less money, because I have fewer dollars. I have less time to live than them, because I have fewer years left.
JFC this thread is bizarre. Just look this shit up, it’s not that hard. In fact here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=less+vs+fewer&t=ffab&ia=web
You will see that all of those results will agree that less is almost always correct when talking about time, despite the unit. And the very rare cases where fewer is correct do not cover OP’s title.
You will also see that less is practically always correct for money. It is the single most notable exception to the countable vs uncountable rule that is mentioned very often.
edit: I’m also gonna preempt any possible “it’s not incorrect it’s just unusual” response. “Just unusual” or “just awkward” is very often as close to incorrect as certain things get in a language.
From Grammerly:
It is also customary to use less with regard to time, even though we can count time in seconds, minutes, hours, and so on.
Example:
Ethan has been at his job for less than five years.
I wish I could spend less time on household chores.
Yet, depending on how general or specific your reference to time is, it may require the use of fewer.
Example:
I wish I could spend fewer hours on household chores and more on watching television.
Both less and fewer are perfectly acceptable in this context.