Learn English – “Not a lot of his friends…”

grammargrammaticality-in-contextquantifiers

I have come across the following construction, but l am not sure whether it is correct or not.

Not a lot of his friends speak English well.

My question is: can we use "a lot of" in a negative sentence as mentioned above?

Best Answer

Yes, you can use this construction. From the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Definition of a lot of

a large number or amount of (things, people, etc.)

A lot of people feel that way. There was a lot of space. Not a lot of people know that.

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/a%20lot%20of

I think it's fine for informal usage, but I personally would avoid using it in formal, written English. The word lot, defined as a large number or amount, often carries the "informal" label in dictionaries. Not a lot of seems even more informal to me.

Related Topic