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'

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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.”

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

Is a throuple more or fewer than a treble?

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?”

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".

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.)

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...

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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.

Heroes 3 is the law, and it says 9 is several.

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.

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. :)

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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"