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> 学生はおおぜいきましたか。  
>  いいえ、3人 **しか** 来ませんでした。わたしとトムさんとアンさんです。

Can you give more example in which しか is used so that I can understand it?
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2023-01-06T07:15:21.500
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words
What does しか mean in this context?
Here, 「しか」 means "only". So, the word is emphasizing how "only three people
came." Another example of 「しか」 being used in this context is
「今、財布に500円しかありません。」 where 「しか」 emphasizes how "only 500 yen" is in the wallet.
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2023-01-06T14:40:11.450
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My general gloss for しか is "other than", or "non-". It is a strongly [negative
polarity item](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1565/); it will
only be seen in combination with a verb in negative form.

Here, other-than three people (人) did not come (来 + ません + でした, conjugated
formally; the informal version is 来なかった). With quantities, specifically, we
interpret that _more than_ three people did not come. In other words, _only_
three people came (i.e., we _excluded the possibility_ of it being more than
that).

This also explains the idiom しかない: it is simply a combination of しか with the
negative adjective ない. Thus: 猫しかない -> "cat -other-than does-not-exist" ->
"(it) must be a cat"; 立つことしかない -> "stand-up -act-of -other-than does-not-
exist" -> "(you) only need to stand up".
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