These words refer to small groups of more than two members. Several emphasizes the fact that more than two are involved; few adds to this minimal restriction an unspecified maximum restriction, emphasizing the smallness of such a group: several friends dropped in during the day, but only a few stayed for dinner. Both words are useful precisely because they are vague, but beyond their reference to a small group, neither has any connotative richness.

Diverse and divers are different in pointing to a larger, though still restricted group. Furthermore, each adds implications that make both more specific than the previous pair. When divers is substituted for several , it stresses the variety or disunity within the grouping: divers attitudes expressed by the panel members. The word may have an archaic sound to it, but in any case divers is more formal than diverse . The latter is even stronger in its emphasis on dissimilarities among members of a group. Diverse may, in fact, suggest a deliberate selection to give a representative cross-section of types that are varied or diversified in form or kind: an anthology purporting to represent the diverse kinds of poetry being written by contemporary poets.

Sundry , in contrast with diverse, emphasizes the randomness of differences among members of a group indefinite in size; the word carries a tone of casual but deliberate approximation: the sundry skills that go into making up a musical comedy. The word can also actually suggest dissimilar things viewed in isolation rather than collected in a group: sundry times and places. Various is less formal than sundry but is more matter-of-fact about a wide representation of differing things, whether actually grouped together or looked at in isolation: various trees dotting the landscape; various sorts of people out for an afternoon walk.

ANTONYMS; none, one.