Yes, We Do Have Better Things To Do

Today our group had a lunchtime debate on the meaning of the word "couple". Does it mean "two and only two", or can it mean "three or four"? The debate spilled over into email, which is never a good sign. One coworker wrote:

The first link Ryan posted also explained the difference between saying "a couple of" vs. referring directly to a couple in the context of two people acting as a couple. "couple of" and "couple" have two different meanings. This is why English sucks.

Which is totally unfair. All languages have words that change meaning when the context changes. Most languages have words that change meaning when the grammar changes slightly. And some languages have words that change meaning with pitch -- yikes!

Of course with the bait this obvious, it would have been silly for me to respond with a vigorous defense of the English language. Not to mention that I actually agree with my coworker's conclusion, if not his reasoning. Fortunately, another coworker came up with an ironclad rebuttal:

Along the same lines you could claim that Perl sucks, which is obviously wrong.

And Mike wins the thread! Personally, I'm in the camp that believes "a couple" means strictly "two". Although I suppose it can mean "three" for very small values of three.

Comments

“A couple of” means two, end of story. Anyone who says otherwise is a dirty, blaspheming heretic.

“A few”, for most things, means roughly 2-5 (it should be countable on one hand), with a fairly strong preference for not being as low as 2. For objects where a large number of them is common, “a few” can mean something larger than this. Like, if you’re defining “a few” grains of rice, a small handful containing as many as 15 or 20 would be an acceptable interpretation.

“Several” is generally whatever’s slightly greater than “a few”. “Several” tennis balls would be about 6-10 of them — more than can be counted on one hand, but not so many you can’t count ‘em with both.

Posted by Auros on Feb. 06, 2006 at 5:19 PM [#]
Haven’t heard “very small values of three” since college, thank you for the laugh. And Auros is exactly right about couple/few/several.

Posted by xyz on Feb. 06, 2006 at 6:10 PM [#]
Damn skippy it means two, end of story. Thanks, guys… the consensus at the office was going the other way, and I was beginning to doubt my convictions.

Posted by Evan on Feb. 06, 2006 at 8:07 PM [#]
Or as the OED would have it:

“Two individuals (persons, animals, or things) of the same sort taken together; properly used of such as are paired or associated by some common function or relation; but often loosely, as a mere synonym for two”

Havng said that, I can’t help but feel that consulting an actual scholarly reference might be somehow considered cheating?*

*Not that I would consider the OED correct if actual usage differed from it’s definition, language not being prescriptive and all that…

Posted by jgraham on Feb. 07, 2006 at 2:32 AM [#]
We were lazy and only looked it up in the Wiktionary. Serves us right.

Posted by Evan on Feb. 07, 2006 at 7:52 AM [#]
I have always thought of “couple” to mean two. But when used in the phrase “a couple of X” I think of it meaning at least two…probably not much more than two.

“A few” is quite similar, but it is more nebulous and it starts at three…and is probably not much more than three.

If you ask me how much beer I drank, if I say “a couple”, I mean 2.

If I say “let’s go get a couple of beers.”, I mean at least 2. (I’m not sharing my beer with you!)

If you ask me how much beer I drank, if I say “a few”, I mean to say that I had more than 2 and I can’t remember how many I had.

If I say “let’s invite a few friends over”, I don’t mean to send an e-mail to my addess book…just to the small number of people I might lend my car too. That number would always be more than 2.

Posted by No Name on Feb. 07, 2006 at 1:07 PM [#]
Anyone ever ask to borrow “a couple of bucks” and only borrow $2?

Posted by Sam on Feb. 09, 2006 at 3:19 PM [#]

Yes, We Do Have Better Things To Do

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