'Couple,' 'Few,' and 'Several' | Hacker News Reader

'Couple,' 'Few,' and 'Several'

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My cousin, an Australian, married a Canadian, and they live in North America. After they’d been married for over five years (a surprisingly long time before this confusion arose, in my opinion), she once asked him to fetch a couple of something from the shops. He dutifully returned with two, and she asked “since when does a couple mean two?” They consulted with her family, and sure enough, they largely thought of and expected “a couple” to mean more than two. Meanwhile, when in Australia, I would expect “a couple” to absolutely always mean exactly two.

I find that pretty bizarre. I do sometimes refer to more than two things as "a couple of X" (which I probably immediately internally cringe over after saying it), but if I were to ask someone to buy a couple of something, I would never expect more than two to be bought.

Ultimately we probably should just avoid using these words when asking someone to do something that will result in some sort of concrete number of things or events. Better to just convey a specific number and avoid confusion.

As an aussie, it can mean both for me.

eg. i just need to you to grab a couple of things from supermarket for me.

The number of items is small, not not always two.

Same here, in Canada; it's a metaphorical use, by my reading, similar to '<blank> will only take a second'

Right, to me "couple" means two except when vaguely gesturing some small number.

Kiwi here, would never ever do that, I'd just say "a few". Amongst those few things there might be "a couple of apples" which would definitely mean exactly two, no more, no less.

I'd allow that "a couple of things" could mean 3, even 4 at a stretch - you're downplaying the size of the task to make it sound like your request isn't unreasonable. But a couple of some specific item (can of coke, etc.) means 2 - if they brought back 3 I'd ask them what's the 3rd one for.

Surprising people think this then always say “you are a cute couple” or “you make a good married couple.”

People regularly use “couple” to make it sound like less.

“I only had a couple of beers, officer.”

“Hey, can I borrow a couple bucks?”

Maybe we should start asking someone to grab a throuple of things from the store

Is a throuple more or fewer than a treble?

That's a completely different context.

How so? A couple (of people) derives from the same meaning of the word couple, meaning two. It's the exact same context as comparing a couple of anything else.

"Couple" implies a specific sort of relationship between two people—there are lots of pairs of people, even pairs who know each other, that we would never refer to as "couples"!

That's a distinct meaning from "couple" as in "couple of apples", where it really does just mean "two".

Sure, but I'm talking about the etymology and origin of the word couple as in people, which derives from the same word as couple, as in two. I'm not saying anything about the sociological relationship of a couple versus a pair of people.

Your etymology is correct, but that has no bearing on the fact that the word has multiple distinct meanings, which is very typical of English. It actually has at least three:

(1) A small number of things (roughly 2)

(2) Two people in some sort of relationship

(3) to join or connect (two) things together

Even though each is obviously derived from the fact that two things are involved, that wouldn't even cross the mind of a native speaker hearing the word in different contexts and assuming the right meaning.

One can have n-way couplings though.

https://www.amazon.com/Coupling-Garden-Fitting-Adaptor-Conne...

I think what’s happening here isn’t really regional at all. It’s a kind of confusion that can happen anywhere within the Anglosphere. We have a word, “couple” which means exactly two things. But unlike “one” or “two”, children don’t tend to ever actually be directly told that “couple” means exactly two things, they just pick it up naturally.

People like playing with language, and use understatement regularly. Unlike “I’ll just have two beers”, where it’s obvious to any child who has learned to count that this is the case, when kids regularly see people around them say “I’ll just have a couple of beers”, they assume couple is another word for an indeterminate small amount like few. When they later learn of other uses of “couple” they assume these are unrelated.

Lexicographers can be frustrated all they want. People do indeed "like playing with language."

Sometimes one may want to be accurate but not really need to be precise. Sometimes one needs to be both accurate and precise. One should never be precise and inaccurate (e.g pi=8.739216503).

But sometimes people need to be vague and ambiguous (e.g diplomacy) and sometimes one can be ambiguous with another who knows exactly what he means.

Sometimes the gap is easier filled with non-verbals. If a waiter asks me if I'd like fresh ground pepper on my salad he doesn't ask if I want one twist, a couple of twist, few twist, or several twist. He starts grinding the pepper over my salad and says "Say when".

On the other hand, my wife has no need to ask. She knows I mean sex. (You didn't see that coming. I jest, but a couple has several ways of saying sex without saying it, some fewer than others.)

Couple in that case refers to the, erm, act.

Perhaps they are just less judgemental about polyamory.

I attest the following usages:

* "a couple of things" _ is a general statement meaning, sundry articles

* "a couple of specific things" _ sundry but specific articles which the knight errant must not fail to fetch, e.g. dinner likely depends on it

* "a couple of apples" _ means two apples

American, here, and this is also my expectation. I think the example of the couple in Canada is probably unusual, though maybe it’s different in Canada.

As an American my family had very strict notions of this growing up.

Couple = 2, that's it. Few = 3 75.000001% of the time. Otherwise it's 4.

Also from the US, I grew up with "couple few" used to indicate anything between 2 and, I dunno, 6?

An Australian here.

"A couple" is exactly 2, excepting very specific downward exaggeration ("I'll only have a couple of beers.")

"Several" is always more than 2 but always a small number - say 3, 4, or 5.

"A few" is always more than 2 and probably more than several.

"Many" would normally exceed several, probably by quite a bit.

And of course "one" is always 1, excepting downwards exaggeration similar to a couple.

I remember from playing Heroes of Might and Magic that "few" is 1-4 and "several" is 5-9.

That's also how I learnt grouping as a kid !

Context: in HoMM, a turn-based strategy game, you can see wandering "armies" in the world map, but cannot see the exact number of units in these armies unless you spent some points in scouting. What you do have is a verbal description of the army ("several trolls", "lots of faeries", etc.).

And especially, you meet a <throng, swarm, zounds> of <gnolls, dragon flies, red dragons> and so on.

Those words always seemed the most fantastical to me

9 seems to high for 'several'...

Maybe 'quite a few'?

9 could be several chickens, but quite a few cows.

There are several countries with populations over 100 million. 15 in fact.

That's so interesting. I'm an American and I would swap the meaning of few and several. In my mind, a few is usually between 3 and 5 but has an upper limit around 7. Several is anything beyond that

Agreed. I think few=3, some=4, several/many=5/6/7

Yeh, nah mate. A few is probably 3, perhaps 4, and definitely not more than several, except where several counts as 2.

And a "handful" is always five ... or more if you are going for the more american "what can be carried in the hand" definition.

Few and many also depend on context. "So few people voted last election" could mean 20,000,000 people, whereas "Many supreme court justices believe..." could refer to only four people.

“few” and “a few” are different

Another Aussie here.

I would say that "a couple" can also mean several. For example:

"Come back in a couple of days and we might have them in stock".

"Turn right where the old farmhouse used to be and they are a couple of k's down the road"

I'd interpret that as "2 days", with the implicit assumption that you can come back after 2 days and we'll still have them. A couple of km shouldn't really mean more than 3km, but obviously we don't expect anyone to go out and measure them.

I'd allow that "a couple" could mean "2 that I'm certain about, but possibly 3 or maybe even 4".

As a Brit I'd pretty much agree with everything you said except switching several/few. Several is generally somewhat more than a few, at least in the UK. "I'm going away for a few days" would imply a weekend, perhaps, but several days could be up to a full week.

This is emphasised by that a few may mean 2 or even 1, whereas several should not.

Just "few" could mean 1 or 2, "a few" is at least 3 in my book.

As an Australian I agree with you. I would definitely expect several to be more than a few. Most of the time "a few" would mean 3 or 4, to me. "Several" is anywhere from 4 to ~7.

That's close to my take from the SF Bay Area too. A few days over a weekend would strongly tend towards adding either Friday or Monday but not both.

I do consider that "a couple" is imprecise and varies by context. Asking for a couple cloves of garlic while cooking could mean 2-4, especially if they are small. Asking for a couple bulbs of garlic on a shopping list could only mean 2!

For items, I think I'm also more like to shift into "half a dozen" or "dozen" than expect common ground on what "several" communicates. For days, I think I'd shift to "a week" or "N weeks" as soon as it spans a Monday-Friday work week, even if the start/end weeks are partial.

I always consider several to be in the region of about seven due to the first syllable. Few would be in the 3-5 range, several 5-10, many 10-15 and lots being more than that, but it’s also context based too. If there were 7 apples in a bowl I might say several. If there were 7 nuts it would be “a few”.

That's interesting because for me (Canadian), a few is definitely less than several. I'd expect several to be something like 5-9.

American here from mid-Atlantic east coast region. - Couple = always 2 - Few = always 3 - Several = 4-7 This might a family thing, but that's what we were taught.

Huh? 'A few' is not more than 'several'! Several could easily be 10 or more (but almost always more than 3 or 4). A few would rarely be more than 5.

I have to say I never thought there'd be that much disagreement among English speakers around the world on such basic terminology.

“Several” just means ”at least two” (plus usually also “less than a dozen” or so). For example, if you don’t quite remember if you went to a particular restaurant two times or three times, it’s still not incorrect to say “I went there several times”.

English is my second language. I agree with your definitions except that I've always thought "several" is more than "a few". Say 3-5 is a few and 5-7 is several. 5 works for both, but 4 is too few for "several" and 6 is too many for "a few".

> "Many" would normally exceed several, probably by quite a bit.

And what quantity is "quite a bit"?

I am on the wife's side here.

I was in the US and someone corrected me when I said I had a couple of something and they said "Actually, you've got three" or something "That's what I said" "You said a couple" "..."

It had never occurred to me that people mistakenly thought couple meant exactly 2 - how weird.

Mistakenly? Couple literally means two, as in, the people there look like a nice couple.

Couple also literally (figuratively) means some small plural number, because a couple people (at least a few, several… many even) use it that way. It’s an understandable mistake in understanding, as the word has a couple meanings.

Fortunately, I'm a prescriptivist, not a descriptivist, at least until it doesn't make sense to be anymore, if the language changes so much in the future. No one is still a prescriptivist for Old English, for example.

Fortunately you’re a descriptivist, unfortunately you’re stubborn about it ;)

How so? You'd be the descriptivist in this scenario, no?

The joke is that everyone is a descriptivist, since language changes whether you want to or not. That joke ignores the fact that I will use the language exactly as I learnt it, when it was objectively perfect, and not a moment before or after.

Yeah, that's what I was also implying, haha.

That is a completely different usage of the word as far as I'm concerned, like confusing nut ( and bolt) with nut (from a tree), in this case 'a couple' like two people in a relationship implies a link, like they are coupled. A couple of apples does not imply any link, it just means some small number.

It's not a completely different usage, it's literally the same usage, because couple means two. Thus, a couple (of people) means two people, just as a couple of apples means two apples. Being coupled also derives from the original meaning, two being bonded as one object (see also: coupling). These are all variations of the same word, etymologically. In contrast, nut from a car versus nut from a tree are wholly different both in meaning.

Etymologically there are 3 and 4 way couplings... latin copula just means 'joined', nothing about 2.

Yes, but in the English derivation of the Latin, it explicitly means two.

No - common usage is clearly more than 2. In the context of relationships I completely agree because no one says "They are a two".

But when you are in the context of quantity, "a couple" is a quicker way of saying "between 2 and 3/4/5" .

There are no "rules" in English, only conventions. It is a product of whoever speaks it and whatever they bring with them, and as such is forever changing and evolving without any control or authority.

Isn't that basically what we are debating about? It is clear that "common" usage differs substantially where while some use your definition, others mean mine. And anyway, it is also clear that, based on many dictionaries, the original definition at least always meant two.

There are no definitions. Citing Latin is pointless and argumentative. Please let go and live your life.

I did not cite Latin, for the record, looks like you're thinking of the other person in this thread. But yes, words definitely have definitions, whether one wants to debate their meanings is a different matter.

> No - common usage is clearly more than 2.

This whole thread is baffling to me because in my entire life, I have only ever heard people use "couple" to mean "two".

Right - an obvious example being "married couple"

i'm from the western united states and have always understood "a couple of ___" to be more than 2.

If you want a casual way of saying exactly 2, "pair" rather than "couple". A pair, even in the most casual sense, is really really exactly 2.

Except with trousers, then a pair is exactly one thing. :)

Until age 17 I thought of "a couple" as being an imprecise amount more than "one" but less than "a few". So around 2-3. Though when referring to people I always thought of it as =2.

It wasn't until 17 that someone (my girlfriend at the time) pointed out that by definition it should always be 2.

I'm not sure why I thought there was some fuzz in there. I also don't know why nobody had corrected me until then. I can only speculate that I and the people around me usually said "two" when we wanted two of something. The rest of the time I suppose I had a 50/50 shot at the right answer.

TFA says that you were right before 17. There is a lot of fuzziness in the words we use.

Brit here. ‘Couple’ always means two, to me.

Years ago I read ‘The Difference Engine’, a steampunk novel written by an American set in Victorian England. I thought the dialogue etc seemed quite realistically English until one of the protagonists returns from a bar with ‘a pair of pints’. No Brit would ever use ‘pair’ like this although ‘couple’ would work, sort of.

I'm an ESL speaker, and throughout my whole life I've always considered "a couple" to be equivalent to "a few". Then, I played Papers, Please and the author has always only used the term to mean exactly two. I still associate this meaning with that particular game.

Also ESL, I've always considered "a couple" to mean "a loose two". It could be three, maaaaybe four, but if you've gotten to five, you're pushing it.

I'm American and that's what I would say for "a couple". "As few" to me is just a small amount compared what is typical. So a few marshmallows might be 2 because generally people have somewhere between 5 and 10. A few skittles might be 5 because people will take a handful normally which is 20 or so skittles. "Several" to me is "a little less than the average amount" so with our previous example 5 marshmallows, 10 skittles.

I'd bet that most people have this kind of relative meaning for these words

> if you've gotten to five, you're pushing it.

I agree; five is right out.

Well it’s fairly self evident - “the happy couple” - we’re not talking about three or four people, we always mean a pair, comprising two people

Same in South Africa; I was surprised to hear "a couple" can mean more than two.

Canada is a big place, but for what it’s worth, in my 36 years of being Canadian, a “couple” has always meant “two, but if I get three or four that’s fine.”

I remember being distinctly befuddled when I was younger watching an episode of Fawlty Towers when the obnoxious “American” orders “a couple of filet mignons”.

As an American myself, it felt like one should know how precisely how many filet mignons one wanted when ordering in a restaurant, rather than leaving it up to interpretation.

Didn’t realize then that “couple” in British English was almost certain to mean exactly two. I wonder if Americans also used it in that sense back in the 1970s when that episode was filmed, or if that is actually a bit of a shibboleth goof — the “American” actor was of course British, like everyone on the show except John Cleese’s real-life wife Connie Booth.

(Now that I think of it, as Booth was a co-writer, she probably would have caught this mistake if it was in fact a difference in American vs. British English. I imagine instead the American meaning has drifted toward less specificity over time.)

I'm an American who uses "couple" to mean exactly two. I suspect this is more of a regional or familial thing than something we can say about American English as a whole.

I’d argue that there really isn’t a single American English just as there isn’t a single British English.

I think there are enough commonalities to say useful things about American English. We all spell it "color" instead of "colour" to take a widely known example.

I'm Canadian and my wife is American, and we have absolutely the same disagreement. To me, a couple is exactly two, and to her, it's a synonym for "a few". We compromise by being explicit whenever that word is used.

In primary school (grade 6), I was explicitly taught in grammar class that

* single = one

* couple = two

* few = three or four

* many = five or more

Both single and couple seem very well cemented to me, people say "he's single" or "they're a couple", and there is no confusion there.

But few and many were hammered into my head with equal certainty.

Contrary anecdata:

US citizen, parents from two different dialectal regions in the US.

I was corrected as a child for using "couple" to mean an indeterminate small number and instructed that it means precisely two.

Imagine his excitement: after 5 years of marriage, she suddenly gave him the rhetorical ammunition he needed to bring a mistress into the relationship. After all, they were a couple, and since when does that mean only two?

If he's like me, he's in trouble often enough with just one woman in his life...

> she asked “since when does a couple mean two?”

Sounds like she’s into polygamy? ;)

My mom's interpretation (midwest and eastcoast US, 80s) is largely related to snacks before dinner. "Can I have a few cookies?" "You can have a couple". This meant two. You could sometimes get away with three, but it would result in mild disappointment from my mom, because if she meant three she would have said "you can have a few". In no case did couple mean four. "Can we have some cookies?" "Yes, you can have some cookies" meant four total cookies, split between the siblings, presumably fairly (but she let us battle out that agreement, with everyone getting at least one). This wasn't based solely on how many you had, but how many she expected the cookie jar to be short the next time she looked at it, so you couldn't game it by asking for a few multiple times. "Some" was pretty rare, probably more likely in the early afternoon vs getting closer to dinner time. "Several" was more than four, and was very rare. There was some wiggle room, at least in what you could get away with even if the meaning was absolute, with the cost being a disappointing look and admonishment of "you'll ruin your dinner". Couple is two. Few was three. Some was four. If she said "some" and you took three, you were cheating yourself.

Watching a Mad Men clip last night, Draper, Sterling and a client are at a restaurant and Roger handwavingly dismisses the waiter saying "bring us a couple of iceberg wedges" for, presumably, the three of them, and I thought "Who exactly did he order for?"

in german there is a distinction: "a couple" as in "two people" is "ein Paar", whereas "a couple of things" does not get capitalized: "ein paar Dinge"

Ugh. I really really want "couple" to always mean two, and "few" to always mean three or four. I've never had strong feelings about "several"; I've usually understood it to mean some fairly loose number, perhaps less than "many", but probably (but not exclusively) more than "a few".

But I admit that I sometimes use "couple" to mean a little bit more than two, and "few" to mean a bit more than even four.

I think it should just not matter all that much. I would loosely order them as: couple < few < several (but even then I'm sure there would be exceptions), but their exact numbers aren't all that important, as long as it's not important that the other person get exact numbers out of whatever I'm talking about.

But if I do want someone to do something specific, I should never tell someone to "buy a few tomatoes". I should tell them the exact number I want in order to avoid confusion or surprises later. Whenever someone asks me to buy a "couple" or a "few" of something, I always ask for clarification.

It's interesting that this was posted as I was having this exact discussion on the subject yesterday with some family. I've always considered "couple" to mean 2, "few" to mean 3, "several" to mean more than 3 but less than 12, and "dozen" to mean 12.

Now you can have a couple dozen, or several dozen.

That's where I think the Korean numeric system really shines, for some weird reason.

gloss: han(a)=1 du(l)=2 se(t)=3 ne(t)=4 daseot=5 yeoseot=6 ilgop=7 yeodeol=8

    handu = one or two
    duse = two or three
    sene/seoneo = three or four
    duseoneo = two or three or four
    nedet = four or five
    daeyeoseot = five or six
    yeoseoilgop = six or seven
    ilgoyeodeol = seven or eight

Sadly I think that's about it, it doesn't extend much more. But it's quite useful where it's available!

At this point, why not just use the exact number of items discussed? This system is more complex without any improved precision.

I’m pretty sure they started put as the exact numbers and were just shortened eventually for convenience. This kind of compound word shortening happens all the time in all languages, it’s just Korean happens to have it for numbers, not particularly related to the numeric system as suggested.

We have "one or two" in Greek as well. It is commonly understood to mean any small number, like "a couple", but can be much larger if the thing typically comes in large numbers. If you say "I want one or two chillies", you would expect to get five or ten, not one or two.

A small amount of the whole?

Of what someone would reasonably request, eg peanuts at a bar.

Are those terms used for continuous measurements (e.g. distances/timespans)? Could 110 seconds be "duse" minutes, or always "handu"?

Minutes are problematic for a different reason, but hours would work. I think 110 minutes can count as either "handu" hour or "duse" hour - after all they aren't supposed to be exact measures.

(The reason minutes don't work is that Korean has two different sets of numerals, native and Chinese, and minutes only work with Chinese numerals.)

I've always used the Heroes of Might and Magic army size as a reference: https://heroes.thelazy.net/index.php/Creature

I came here for this comment :)

>”Several is usually used for a number greater than a couple and a few. Occasionally it is used in the same way as couple and few.“

Like when the speaker/writer wants to emphasize that was more than two. “The suspect had several beers.” Vs “The suspect had a couple beers.”

The number of beers in this hypothetical example is the same. But the meaning of the sentence— perhaps the intention behind the sentence— is entirely different.

Another couple of common words that can cause confusion are “last” and “next” in reference to days of the week. If today is Monday, for example, when are “next Wednesday,” “next Thursday,” “next Friday,” and “next Saturday”? The same week? Or the following week? What about if today is Sunday or Tuesday?

Twenty years ago, when I was working as a dictionary editor, I wrote a note about the problem:

https://www.gally.net/leavings/00/0014.html

After noticing this problem at college, I settled on constructions concise and precise, such as:

this week Thursday, this coming Thursday, next week Thursday, Thursday after next

Jasper Fforde has written a series of humorous novels about a character named Thursday Next. [1, 2]

[1] https://www.carnegielibrary.org/staff-picks/thursday-next-se...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday_Next

And a proposed solution: https://oxtweekend.com/

They kinda found a solution in French, if you want to be sure that it's Wednesday next week, it's "mercredi en huit" literally translated to "Wednesday in eight (days)". So it's the first Wednesday following today + 8 days( included today)

Edit : height VS eight when translating huit

I don't speak French, but it seems a lot more likely that "en huit" would translate as "in 8 (days)" rather than "in height (days)". Are you a native speaker and know better, or might this be a mistake?

I assume it's a hyper-corrective insertion of an 'h'

Clearly a mistake!

Would “coming Wednesday“ or just “on Wednesday”, or “on Wednesday in a week” be less ambiguous?

Expecting precise use of imprecise measurement words seems nuts. If people were of the mind to be precise, they wouldn't be using "couple" "few" and "several" in the first place.

The problem is that they have a number in mind, but refuse to state that number.

My parents regularly get into arguments about how many of an item were purchased as my mother will never use a number. It is always some descriptor word like "few", or "several" or "plenty."

Only after things are purchased will it be revealed that plenty means 16.

This is my thought exactly. If I meant only ever exactly 2.00000000000 I'd say "two". If I'm saying "some small value of approximately two" I'll say "a couple".

This begs the question because for me "a couple of X" is equivalent to "two of X". It's not an imprecise term for me. (The one exception that comes to mind is "a couple of things" which I understand to be just loosely defined all around.)

But would you say a bicycle has a couple of wheels?

Yes, I would.

Does yours have more than a couple of wheels?

What really grinds my gears is when people use the words "couple" and "few" in exactly the opposite way they are supposed to be used. How can a couple not be exactly two? Why would you then use few to mean exactly two?

These people are almost always American. At least, I've never encountered someone I know not to be American making this error.

It's part of a wider pattern I've noticed where Americans just say things backwards. Some examples include "let's see if I can't" (meaning let's see if I can), "could care less" (meaning couldn't care less), "me either" (meaning me neither), "irregardlees" (meaning regardless). It's an interesting phenomenon.

> Couple is used to refer to two things, but is also often used for a small number greater than two

Is this an American thing? It would be obviously wrong to refer to any number not two as a "couple" in AU/NZ English.

It’s totally standard to use “couple” as a small indeterminant number. “I’m going to the store to grab a couple of things” doesn’t mean your shopping list is exactly two items long.

I'm a Kiwi living in AU; perhaps I've been misunderstanding Aussies all this time! I've never been aware that anyone would interpret it as anything other than exactly two, I'll have to bear this in mind.

Not that I disbelieve you strict couplists...but I am finding it hard to believe you.

Are you saying that when someone tells you, "Would you mind waiting a couple of minutes," that in all honesty you literally expect to wait two minutes, no more and no less?

Or that if someone in authority says, "I've got a couple of minor issues with your submission," you feel confident they will mention two and only two issues, and never start out with two but work their way up to seven?

I grant that the canonical expected value of a couple is "two." But it seems to me the reason people use "couple" as opposed to "pair" or just "two" is because it allows for some metaphorical wiggle-room.

> Would you mind waiting a couple of minutes

This is a bad example, since "Would you mind waiting two seconds" might mean 90 seconds. But that doesn't mean you can say 2 instead of 90 in the general case.

I readily concede your astute counterpoint but what I'm suggesting is that unlike actual cardinal numbers, words like "couple" are much more likely to be used euphemistically than literally, when in adjectival phrases. But in the noun form then I agree it means "a pair" and no more.

I'd only say a couple of minutes if I thought two minutes was actually a likely time period, yeah, otherwise I'd say a few minutes if I was less certain.

I'd disagree with that as a 'native' AU speaker, it's less formal than that and can definitely mean more (or less) than 2.

No, in the UK I have never known it to only ever be 2 (unless context is romantic)

Im australian, and a "couple of things" is some small number, like 2-4. Using it for exactly 2 seems like people are confusing it with 2 things that are coupled. Why not just say 2 if thats what you mean.

Why does English ever have synonyms? I'm not saying you're wrong, clearly (as a a Kiwi) I've been misinterpreting Aussie usage, but "there's already another way to say that" is pretty common.

Would you go so far as to say "there's a couple different ways to say that?" As an American, this sounds a little folksy but not that odd. And it wouldn't mean that there are exactly two ways to say something!

Only if I was confident there were only two other ways, I'd say a few (or, bearing the weirdness of English in mind, probably "many").

"A couple of beers" is a quintessentially aussie expression .. and it is never just two beers.

Yes, but that's just a white lie :D

It's not even a consistently American thing.

I (from Texas) use "couple" to mean two-ish-or-more whereas my wife (from New Mexico) uses couple to mean exactly two.

I use "couple" to (roughly) mean "just enough in small amounts" like:

- just a couple more minutes (obviously doesn't mean 2 minutes and 0 seconds)

- grab a couple of glasses (probably two unless there are three people)

- buy a couple of things (I'm making a short trip for a small number of things)

For those decrying using imprecise language, it's because these are scenarios where enumerating would give an incorrect level of precision.

I'm being informed by other Aussies that it's not consistent here either, lots of people seem to use it imprecisely as well. I'm actually a Kiwi (but have lived the most recent 15 years in Australia) so it seems I've been misinterpreting the Aussies for years...

An interesting linguistic nuance in (at least British) English is that you can say "I went to get 2 or 3 things from the garage" and it would still be accepted as correct if you actually got 5 things.

It really bugs me when people say "one of the only" instead of "one of the few", I feel like there's a subtle semantic difference in there (everything is one of the only / it doesn't necessarily imply rarity, or anything really).

They have different shades to me. "only" is reflects survivorship, "few" reflects more of a subjective.

"One of the only remaining B-29 bombers" vs "One of the few good writers of <genre>"

In the light of all these HN comments, it is obvious that "couple" is not a helpful word, sowing discord even among native speakers, so I'll just keep avoiding it and just use:

- "two" to mean "two" (duh!)

- "a few" for "a small number of but not one" / "two or more but not many"

- "few" or "not many" for "not many"

- "several" for the less specific "two or more, many or not". I'll probably avoid saying "several" for "two" if I can help it though, because I know it might confuse or even annoy some people.

It might help me avoid a couple of annoying issues.

I was expecting more guidance on 'several'. IMO, it goes up to 7, but is usually 4-6. What is anyone else's intuition?

Now we need a crackdown on "very unique".

Unique means one.

It's plainly clear to me that "unique" in most casual contexts means "there are aspects of this thing that make it stand out", and "very unique" means "those aspects are strongly pronounced".

And yet incorrect by the definition :-) Language is fun

Or put another way, "unique" is being used completely correctly in "very unique", it's "very" that's being used to mean "obviously".

The word is distinctive (or perhaps distinguished).

May I add "the reason being is that..." to the list?

You can probably find allies among those on the campaign against "more optimal".

I wonder if peoples underestimation of things contributed towards the inflation of couple. I only had a couple of beers/coffees/chocolates etc.

Also is many > several? and how does plethora and myriad fair?

Plethora to me (British English) seems to suggest not so much a specific quantity, but diversity in items. "There were a plethora of options."

Myriad definitely feels much, much greater than 'many' - indeed, the proper definition is exactly ten thousand. At that point though, you wouldn't want to be the person counting the items :)

Reading this, I realized that a similar thing developed in German, my native tongue, but from a different root. As a noun, capital Paar refers to a pair of exactly two, like “ein Paar Schuhe”, or a couple (n.), like “das Paar”. As a pronoun, lowercase paar refers to a few or a couple of.

This leads to this weird situation where “ein Paar Socken” is exactly two socks, but “ein paar Socken” can be a few socks, like 2-7. The pronunciation is exactly the same, and both versions are in common use.

Interesting. Though "ein Paar" is singular, "ein paar" is plural, making it clear from the context in many cases. Curiously, it's not clear in the case where it matters most: "please bring [ein [pP]aar Socken]". As an engineer, I'd say "please bring ein Sockenpaar" when I mean ein Paar, for clarity, for the low price of people thinking I'm weird.

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;"

Henry V (1599), W.Shakespeare

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Crispin%27s_Day_Speech

'Few' here means 'several' thousand soldiers (~7,000) at the Battle of Agincourt (1415). In the speech, it is explained that few is in comparison to the whole (adult male) population of England (up to 1m).

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

House of Commons (1940), W.Churchill

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_was_so_much_owed_by_so...

In a deliberate echo of Shakespeare, Churchill also compares the relatively small number of RAF fighter pilots (~3,000) to the many, the population of Britain, it's Empire, the free world, and perhaps all free peoples into our uncertain future.

The one that gets me with "couple" is people who say " a couple beers" instead of "a couple of beers". It's like says "a pile coats" or "a queue customers" or "a herd cows".

this is why English needs a case system :)

A case of beers is 24. That's definitely more than a couple.

There's also "a dozen eggs" if we want English to be consistent.

Reading the comments, it appears that there are folks in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia who understand the use of “couple” as fuzzy. “I’m going to grab a couple of things from the garage” means I’m going to grab a few, maybe 1-4 or so things. It also is understood as meaning 2 when talking about a specific request as in, “Give me a couple of beers.”

So, I’m surprised that so many commenters are surprised by the fuzzy usage. I wonder if it’s a regional thing in each country? But then, how does it transcend borders so thoroughly before spreading (mostly) to every region? Language evolution is such a strange thing.

In European French, a "couple" means two people/being in love with each other.

In Canadian French, a "couple" has the same meaning as in Europe AND also means 2-5 items.

So you can say "my neighbor is in a couple with my cousin" and "I'm gonna fetch a couple items at the grocery store".

And therefore "I'm gonna tell you a couple things about the couple next door" is perfectly fine in Canadian French but not understood in Europe.

don't be surprised. there's more than a couple of morons online commenting on stuff.

Late middle-aged Pacific Northwesterner here. My wife (same situation as me) and I have argued over the meaning of "a couple" since about half-past forever. I was raised to understand that "a couple" means two, no more, no less. She was raised to believe "a couple" is more like "a few" -- two to, say four or five.

However, the argument no longer exists, as she has come to understand that if she asks me to bring her "a couple" of anything from the pantry, she will receive two. She has learned to speak precisely...or at least precisely enough for me.

One thing not mentioned is that US usage has 'couple' as an adjective whereas in British usage it is a noun - hence "a couple hours" is incorrect in Britain, we must say "a couple of hours".

NEVER read "a couple hours" anywhere, and definitely never heard it.

Couple is two. Few is four. Several is at least five. There is nothing for three, except for very large values of two or very small values of four (these are so uncommon in practice that we just use three).

> Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.

Few is 3-5, several is definitely more than 5.

I was always taught that few is either three or four, and you cannot definitively infer which without more information.

But I think this just illustrates the point of the article: people are taught different things, and there has been different opinions on usage for hundreds of years, so we just cannot be definitive here.

If you need to convey a specific number, use that number. Even if you aren't completely settled on a number, but you need to tell someone to do something that will ultimately result in a number, do them the courtesy of fixing your indecision, and pick a number to tell them. If you want to convey some semi-amorphous magnitude, and the number ultimately doesn't matter in any concrete way, sure, you can use couple, few, or several.

The real question, though, is whether 'shrubbery' is a countable noun or not; by extension, is a demand for 'another shrubbery' a valid one?

I am not a native speaker, but my feeling is that several can also be used to insist on non-uniqueness. E.g. "Most rich families own several cars" or "Jupiter has several moons" (= not one). I'm surprised that it is not mentioned in the article.

Jupiter has 95+ moons, which is stretching the definition of “several”.

It is.

> Several came into English in the 1400s, but didn't develop its quantity meanings until the 1500s. (Several initially meant "distinct or separate" in English.) Yes, meanings: several originally referred to more than one.

>> They be but one heire, and yet severall persons. — Edward Coke, _The first part of the institutes of the lawes of England _, 1628

It even mentions Jupiter's moons later!

Oh, indeed it is mentioned, i overlooked this part.

> It even mentions Jupiter's moons later

It is not a coincidence, I reused the example to illustrate my point.

American. I only use couple for 2. Few(er) is countable (v some, less or more). Several is an ambiguous countable small number greater than 2 but probably no more than 5 (v bunch, which is also ambiguous and countable but more than several).

I will continue to use them this way.

It's a "couple of things" not "a couple things". Drives me nuts.

Both are correct, actually. British vs. American English as someone pointed out above.

Another example of the imprecise nature of the English language: when does afternoon become evening and evening become night? Also how you can legitimately say both "I was up at two this morning" and "I was up until two last night" :-)

Afternoon becomes an evening when the sun starts to set. An evening becomes a night when the sun is fully set.

"I was up at two this morning" has several implied meanings. One of them equals to "I was up until two last night", others do not.

If you were up until two last night, you might legitimately express that with "I was up at two this morning". But if you were up at two this morning, saying "I was up until two last night" might or might not convey the truth. For example, you might have just gotten up.

Many if not all languages have nuances like this. I don't find them particularly odd at all, or specific to English, for that matter...

Several = few >= couple >= 2

This is exactly how I use them.

What's the upper bound on several?

Ten, a hundred, a thousand?

The meaning of several, as reinforced by community usage, to me means "<=10".

I may have several points to make, but I feel obliged to tell you specifically if I have 10 or a dozen or more to make so you can find a chair. ^_^

For >= 10, we have dozen, baker's dozen, score, and 20. This completes the set of conversational units of vague quantities.

What about a bunch?

A bunch of grapes could have many dozens of grapes. Perhaps even a 100 or more.

There's a cereal called "Honey Bunches of Oats". Maybe that word can veer off into non-numerical quantities.

what is a non-numerical quantity?

In the above, "honey"

but a "bunch of" is an actual measurement: a bunch of grapes, a bunch of wheat

I think I expect all of those to be more or less accurate (for the >= 10 ones).

If someone says a dozen, I would expect exactly 12 (especially if it’s something with very strong collocation like “eggs”). If someone says “a baker’s dozen” I would expect exactly 13. If someone says “score”, I’d be surprised, but given how infrequently it’s used, I’d expect the speaker to be using it accurately, not sloppily.

No upper bound since it also is often used as understatement.

I find it more accurate to consider "few" and "several" to refer to the same small pluralities, but that "few" has a connotation of paucity that is not as present in "several"

The U.S. Constitution refers to "the several States" in various places (e.g., Article I, Section 2).

Under U.S. law, therefore, several can mean 13 (the original number of states) or possibly 50 (the current number).

In this case, 'several' is part of a larger grammatical context: 'the several States'.

It's likely that modern interpretation extends the intent to the obvious meaning 'the collection of States (that are part of the country)'. More modern math and logic terms might not have been in wide use at the time, and a 'group' of states sounds inherently ill defined. 'The States of the United States' just sounds silly.

Several historically and often still legally is closer semantically to “individual” than “a few”.

For example, contracts concluded between multiple parties often include terminology like “jointly and severally”.

The term “several” shares its roots with “sever”, and means essentially “unlinked”.

I'd say that in "the several", the word "the" modifies the meaning of "several" to emphasize that they are disjoint and to some degree independent, while not restricting their number.

Whoever specifies or asks implies that the exact amount is not important and defers it to the reader/interlocutor to decide. It can then be

a few = a couple > 1

several > a few

Something similar but I learnt only in my high school is this - "few" vs "a few"

few = not very many, with a focus on the fact that this number is (remarkably) small.

"a few" = not very many, but at least more than one.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1866/a-few-vs-fe...

My English teacher however taught us this way:

few = zero

a few = more than one

"most" to me means more than half. Many folks think it means somewhere around 2/3 or 3/4.

A "couple" to me is between 1.5 and 3 more or less for things that are continuous like time. "Took me a couple weeks/months", I'm expecting that range, not exactly two. Had a silly argument with a neighbour (Canada) when they asked how long I've been in my new house and I said "couple of months" and doing the math it turned out to be like 2.5 or 3.

When I was in graduate school, I was taught "few" means almost none, "couple" means 2, "several" usually avoided but means more than 2. And most of the papers also written that way. I guess things changed, or m-w not intended to cover academic use

I believe "couple" meaning two or more is a US usage. My (Texan) ex used it to mean roughly "more than two, less than seven". For me (Brit), it meant "two, give or take one", i.e. a sort of fuzzy two.

Maybe we should start using tuple in common parlance more.

A bit off topic, but my pet peeve at the moment is the use of "slightly". I've always considered it to mean like less than 5%, maybe a lot less, but I've seen it used in newspapers to mean a 20% or even more. It seems to have lost its meaning somehow.

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