Difference between "much, many, a lot of and lots of"
What is the difference between them?
Are they synonyms or not?
differencemeaningquantifierssynonymsusage
Difference between "much, many, a lot of and lots of"
What is the difference between them?
Are they synonyms or not?
Best Answer
Use "much" to describe a relative amount of a noun that can't be easily counted or quantified. If you can't put a number before the noun, use "much."
Also, if you replace the object with a pronoun, it should be singular (it). Consider "collective nouns" that are singular but describe an unquantifiable volume.
"Much" is often combined with a modifier like "too," "not," or "very."
"Many" describes a quantifiable, countable noun. If you can put a number before the noun you should probably use "many." Here if you replace the object with a pronoun, it will be plural (them, they).
Using "a lot of" or "lots of" is sort of personal preference. In most cases the 2 are interchangeable.
In most cases either one works fine, but you should be careful about replacing "a lot" or "lots" with "many" or "much." Note that in the examples below "many" works in place of "lots/a lot", but "much" doesn't work at all.