▲这是一个很有趣的问题，对于能否使用 only few 这一表达，各位老师进行如此深入的研究，让人很受启发。Only few 的用法确实比较少见，但是不是 only few 的说法就一定是错的呢？我查了一下“英国国家语料库”（BNC），查到了以下一些例子，供大家参考：

(1) A blonde, like me, only few years younger?

(2) This tA blonde, like me, only few years younger?

(3) A blonde, like me, only few years younger?

(4) ...is a doom which must be faced, to know that which only few can know, and which cannot be further explained.’

(5) Some managers who carry a smaller team of paid workers with only few volunteers have indeed shown support for the new breed of ‘unemployed’ worker, in order to broaden the CAB volunteer base.

(6) The proposed concentration would not only have significantly strengthened ATR's position in the commuter markets, but also have eliminated De Havilland from the relevant market, where there are only few competitors, namely British Aerospace, Saab, Fokker, and some minor firms.

(7) They might also accept that some, if only few, among the many would grow; and that when it had become operationally necessary or desirable a growing business could divide itself and in such a way that the divisions were suitable ‘constituencies’ for the democratic purposes of the co-operative.

(8) So far, only few introns have been detected in mitochondria from angiosperms and gymnosperms and all belong to group II (9, 10, 11).

(9) Some of the patients samples showed extremely high sICAM-1 concentrations with up to 1.700 ng/ml while only few did not differ from the control group.

(10) Oh we had whistles, and strangely enough, very seldom did we use them, simply because there were other traffic about that time if you were a long way away, er you might be nearly to , if you blew your whistle, there were nobody to hear you, I mean people in houses, and they were only few and far between.

至于only few与only a few之间有何区别，还需查查有关资料，进行一些细致的研究。

P.S. 刚才无意中看到黎老师在《only a few 到底是肯定还是否定？》中的解答：由吕志士、袁锡兴主编，许孟雄、李赋宁、胡文仲、薄冰、Nicola Cottell 等中外英语专家审定的《英语惯用法大词典》指出：“only few, so few 相当于 few，表示否定；some few 相当于 some，表示肯定。” “only a few, but a few 相当于 few ，表示否定。” 所以，only few 和 only a few 应该是同义短语。——手头没有这本《英语惯用法大词典》，但根据黎老师给出的资料可以看出，only few 的说法还是成立的，并且与 only a few 属同义短语。