Sentence:  L'Unita and Hoy published identical denunciations of Short 's elevation , l'Osservatore Romano and the Christian Science Monitor ignored it , Times of India snickered at it , and the Manchester Guardian simply reported it - the Fosterites in England were <WSD>few</WSD> but extremely militant . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  a quantifier that can be used with count nouns and is often preceded by `a'; a small but indefinite number