Rest 🆚 Remaining

Explanation

The rest and the remaining have similar uses but they use slightly different structures to achieve the same meaning. This is because remaining is an adjective and rest is a noun. You can say the 'remaining material' to mean any material that you didn't need to use. So if you had 30g of a chemical, and you used 20g in the reaction, the remaining material weighs 10g.

You can also use remaining at the end of a structure, e.g. There's 3 products remaining.

You could use 'rest' if you add 'of the' to the structure. You could say 'the rest of the material' instead.

You cannot say ❌'the rest material'.

You can use other words instead of  just using ' rest of the'. It can be replaced with pronouns such as, 'my, your, their' etc. “I'm not sure what to do with the rest of my free time.”

There is one other general rule you can follow. You don't have to follow this rule, it's more of a preference than a strict rule.

Rest of the things is used when we do not know the quantity of things:

"I've read twenty pages today, I'll read the rest of the pages tomorrow."

On the other hand, Remaining is used when the quantity of things is known to us:
"I've read twenty pages today, I'll read the remaining thirty pages tomorrow."

I will occasionally break this rule myself so it's not really that important to follow it.

Examples

❌ We still have enough rest material

✅ We still have enough (of the) remaining material to run the reaction again.

✅ We still have enough of the rest of the material to run the reaction again.

❌ The remaining of the material weighs a little over 110mg

✅ The rest of the material weighs a little over 110mg.

✅ The remaining material weighs a little over 110mg.

❌ We don't have much much time rest.

✅ We don't have much time remaining.

❌ The remaining of the task will take at least 2 hours to complete.

✅ The remaining tasks will take at least two hours to complete.

✅ The rest of the tasks will take at least two hours to complete.