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Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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".

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