{"id":277,"date":"2006-02-06T15:24:33","date_gmt":"2006-02-06T20:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/yes_we_do_have_better_things_to_do"},"modified":"2006-02-06T15:24:33","modified_gmt":"2006-02-06T20:24:33","slug":"yes_we_do_have_better_things_to_do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2006\/02\/yes_we_do_have_better_things_to_do.html","title":{"rendered":"Yes, We Do Have Better Things To Do"},"content":{"rendered":"

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:<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a> — yikes!<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

\n

Along the same lines you could claim that Perl sucks, which is
\nobviously wrong.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}