Does anything strike you as odd about the title of this post?
I came across this wording today in a book by an American author, and immediately thought, “don’t you mean ‘for the past few years’?”. For me that would be a more natural way to express this. Several in this context just sounds wrong. Maybe it sounds natural and normal to you.
Several is defined on WordReference.com as:
1. being more than two but fewer than many (there’s nothing like precision, is there?)
2. separate; different
3. individual; respective
4. several persons or things; a few; some
Several comes from the Anglo-Norman several (separate), from the Medieval Latin sēparālis, from the Latin sēparāre (to separate).
The phrase “past several years” sounds perfectly normal to me. (In fact, reading your title, I was anticipating some update of a project of yours that had been percolating for the past several years. I was momentarily confused that the topic was the phrase itself.)
Since I’m American, as is the author you mention, it could be a British/American distinction.
Yes, to me (UK, BrEng speaker), “the past several years” sounds odd whereas “past few years” sounds perfectly normal and unremarkable.
As an American my reaction was the same as Joe DeRose’s, though context could make a difference. ‘Several’ comes across as more formal than ‘few’, so a CEO saying “For the past several years we’ve been considering improvements in our …..” sounds unremarkable, but if a friend were to say “You know that gym I’ve been going to for the past several years? …” it would sound a bit off and I’d do the same internal auto-correct to “few” that you did.
To me ‘for several years now’ sounds normal, ‘for the past several years’ not so much. I’m and American by the way.