some

some

1. The use of some to mean ‘very much’ or ‘notably such’ in sentences of the type. This is some party is still considered suitable mainly for informal contexts, and Churchill's famous line in a speech in 1941, Some chicken! Some neck! (in response to a warning that England would have her neck wrung like a chicken), does not seem to have affected popular perception of it. It is also used ironically with the opposite meaning in sentences such as Some friend he is to treat you like that!

2. In AmE some is used to mean ‘to some extent’, as in She thought about it some, in the same way that any is used to mean ‘at all’ (You haven't aged any), and is occasionally used with the meaning ‘somewhat’ to qualify an adjective

• He's going to be some pissed off when he finds out about this —M. Machlin, 1976.

These uses are not found in BrE.

3. When some is used before a number, the number should be an approximate or rounded one:

• A row over the seating of the wives of a Gulf VIP held up a British Airways flight from Milan for almost three hours, resulting in some 50 fellow passengers missing connections —Guardian, 2007.

4. The phrase some of us may be treated as a first-person or a third-person phrase depending on the degree of involvement by the speaker or writer: Some of us want to change our plans includes the speaker whereas Some of us want to change their plans excludes or at least distances the speaker from the intended change of plans. The choice only arises when a personal or possessive pronoun or adjective (here our and their) follows in the sentence.