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'Couple,' 'Few,' and 'Several'
- quickthrower2 3y agoI 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?
- seabass-labrax 3y agoPlethora 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 :)
- ssgodderidge 3y ago>”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.
- chrismorgan 3y agoMy 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.
- taskforcegemini 3y agoin 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"
- kelnos 3y agoI 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.
- lysp 3y agoAs 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.
- placesalt 3y agoSame here, in Canada; it's a metaphorical use, by my reading, similar to '<blank> will only take a second'
- nenaoki 3y agoRight, to me "couple" means two except when vaguely gesturing some small number.
- elyobo 3y agoKiwi 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.
- wizofaus 3y agoI'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.
- ww520 3y agoSeveral = few >= couple >= 2
- bgoldste 3y agoThis is exactly how I use them.
- defrost 3y agoWhat's the upper bound on several? Ten, a hundred, a thousand?
- heresie-dabord 3y agoThe 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.
- dylan604 3y agoWhat about a bunch?
- irrational 3y agoA bunch of grapes could have many dozens of grapes. Perhaps even a 100 or more.
- Izkata 3y agoThere's a cereal called "Honey Bunches of Oats". Maybe that word can veer off into non-numerical quantities.
- dylan604 3y agowhat is a non-numerical quantity?
- paxunix 3y agoCouple 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.
- glitchc 3y agoFew is 3-5, several is definitely more than 5.
- kelnos 3y agoI 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.
- seabass-labrax 3y agoThe real question, though, is whether 'shrubbery' is a countable noun or not; by extension, is a demand for 'another shrubbery' a valid one?
- yongjik 3y agoThat'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!
- ahmedfromtunis 3y agoAt this point, why not just use the exact number of items discussed? This system is more complex without any improved precision.
- uranusjr 3y agoI’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.
- stavros 3y agoWe 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.
- kelnos 3y agoUgh. 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.
- ajdude 3y agoIt'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.
- gnicholas 3y agoI was expecting more guidance on 'several'. IMO, it goes up to 7, but is usually 4-6. What is anyone else's intuition?
- bnegreve 3y agoI 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.
- robin_reala 3y agoJupiter has 95+ moons, which is stretching the definition of “several”.
- rawling 3y agoIt 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!
- bnegreve 3y agoOh, 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.
- elyobo 3y ago> 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TylerE 3y agoIt’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.
- elyobo 3y agoI'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.
- zuminator 3y agoNot 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.
- StevenWaterman 3y ago> 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.
- rendaw 3y agoExpecting 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.
- MattGaiser 3y agoThe 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.
- vel0city 3y agoThis 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".
- memefrog 3y ago[dead]
- stvltvs 3y agoThis 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.)
- cbg0 3y agoI've always used the Heroes of Might and Magic army size as a reference: https://heroes.thelazy.net/index.php/Creature https://heroes.thelazy.net/index.php/Creature
- ZuBB 3y agoI came here for this comment :)
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoA 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.
- Animats 3y agoNow we need a crackdown on "very unique". Unique means one.
- vsnf 3y agoIt'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".
- danparsonson 3y agoAnd yet incorrect by the definition :-) Language is fun
- Izkata 3y agoOr put another way, "unique" is being used completely correctly in "very unique", it's "very" that's being used to mean "obviously".
- globular-toast 3y agoThe word is distinctive (or perhaps distinguished).
- danparsonson 3y agoMay I add "the reason being is that..." to the list?
- dcanelhas 3y agoYou can probably find allies among those on the campaign against "more optimal".
- bdowling 3y agoThe 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).
- mjevans 3y agoIn 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.
- d1sxeyes 3y agoSeveral 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”.
- euroderf 3y agoI'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.
- pixelpoet 3y agoIt 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).
- TylerE 3y agoThey 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>"
- jappwilson 3y agoMaybe we should start using tuple in common parlance more.
- tomatocracy 3y agoAn 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.
- arun-mani-j 3y agoSomething 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-few 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
- w-m 3y agoReading 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.
- Mesopropithecus 3y agoInteresting. 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.
- tragomaskhalos 3y agoOne 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".
- pepa65 3y agoNEVER read "a couple hours" anywhere, and definitely never heard it.
- tkgally 3y agoAnother 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 https://www.gally.net/leavings/00/0014.html
- synecdoche 3y agoWould “coming Wednesday“ or just “on Wednesday”, or “on Wednesday in a week” be less ambiguous?
- euroderf 3y agoAfter 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
- jshprentz 3y agoJasper 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-series/ https://www.carnegielibrary.org/staff-picks/thursday-next-se... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday_Next https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday_Next
- alanbernstein 3y agoAnd a proposed solution: https://oxtweekend.com/ https://oxtweekend.com/
- whynotmaybe 3y agoThey 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
- denton-scratch 3y agoI 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.
- milliams 3y agoThe 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".
- Metacelsus 3y agothis is why English needs a case system :)
- bregma 3y agoA case of beers is 24. That's definitely more than a couple.
- stvltvs 3y agoThere's also "a dozen eggs" if we want English to be consistent.
- Digit-Al 3y agoAnother 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" :-)
- lightdot 3y agoAfternoon 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...
- globular-toast 3y agoWhat 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.
- jhanschoo 3y agoI 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"
- leemailll 3y agoWhen 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
- gjvc 3y agoIt's a "couple of things" not "a couple things". Drives me nuts.
- impish9208 3y agoBoth are correct, actually. British vs. American English as someone pointed out above.
- trasz4 3y ago[dead]
- christophilus 3y agoReading 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.
- whynotmaybe 3y agoIn 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.
- fancymcpoopoo 3y agodon't be surprised. there's more than a couple of morons online commenting on stuff.
- mikhailfranco 3y ago"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 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_many_to_so_few 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.
- jraph 3y agoIn 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.
- lazyant 3y agoA "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.
- vcg3rd 3y agoAmerican. 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.
- GoodDreams 3y ago"most" to me means more than half. Many folks think it means somewhere around 2/3 or 3/4.
- themadturk 3y agoLate 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.
- synecdoche 3y agoWhoever 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