Plenty

Plenty as a pronoun

We use plenty as a pronoun to mean ‘enough’ or ‘more than enough’:

A:
How much money do you think I need to bring with me?

B:
About one hundred pounds should beplenty.

[A is pouring milk into B’s coffee]

A:
Is that enough?

B:
That’splenty. Thanks.

We use plenty of as a quantifier before both countable and uncountable nouns to mean ‘a lot’, ‘a large quantity’:

Don’t worry there are plenty of options.

[risotto is an Italian rice dish]

A:
What shall we have for dinner?

B:
Well, we’ve gotplenty ofrice. How about risotto?

Plenty of people have dropped out of school early and have still been very successful in their careers.

Take care to spell plenty correctly: not ‘planty’.

We use plenty of before nouns:

There’s no rush. We’ve got plenty of time.

Not: We’ve got plenty time.