Talk:few sandwiches short of a picnic

RFM discussion: July 2010
Move to sandwich short of a picnic (or sandwiches short of a picnic or some sandwiches short of a picnic). "Few" may not even be the most common quantifier. "two sandwiches short of a picnic" is also very common at bgc. But others included on the first 50 raw hits were "a couple", "three", "seven", "many". Also the singular form outnumbered the plural form 308 to 218 at bgc. Redirects from the "few" and "two" forms seem necessary. DCDuring TALK 18:47, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The general construction is something like "Q [component NP] [short, shy] of a [whole NP]", where Q is taken from among a list of common quantifiers. One extreme example of creative use of the construction is "the scene was one Gidget and two Wilson Brothers shy of a beach movie." DCDuring TALK 19:00, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

one card shy of a full deck
Of course there are many others, including a good number that would be attestable. The meanings are mostly indistinguishable, though they differ in register and in fit with context. See |short+of+a+full%22&hl=en&ei=YVNDTOHXOoH68AaJjbHDDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22shy|short%20of%20a%20full%22&f=false this corpus-based study for more examples].