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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 thi
by chrismorgan 3y ago
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.
- 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.
- developerDan 3y agoSurprising people think this then always say “you are a cute couple” or “you make a good married couple.”
- cgriswald 3y agoPeople regularly use “couple” to make it sound like less. “I only had a couple of beers, officer.” “Hey, can I borrow a couple bucks?”
- dylan604 3y agoMaybe we should start asking someone to grab a throuple of things from the store
- bdowling 3y agoIs a throuple more or fewer than a treble?
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- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoThat's a completely different context.
- satvikpendem 3y agoHow 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.
- tikhonj 3y ago"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".
- heresie-dabord 3y agoI 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
- christophilus 3y agoAmerican, 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.
- 0xDEADFED5 3y agoAs 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.
- klyrs 3y agoAlso from the US, I grew up with "couple few" used to indicate anything between 2 and, I dunno, 6?
- drpixie 3y agoAn 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.
- stodor89 3y agoI remember from playing Heroes of Might and Magic that "few" is 1-4 and "several" is 5-9.
- PetitPrince 3y agoThat'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.).
- kzrdude 3y agoAnd 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
- xen0 3y ago9 seems to high for 'several'... Maybe 'quite a few'?
- pixl97 3y ago9 could be several chickens, but quite a few cows.
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- mattlondon 3y agoI 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.
- satvikpendem 3y agoMistakenly? Couple literally means two, as in, the people there look like a nice couple.
- eyelidlessness 3y agoCouple 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.
- satvikpendem 3y agoFortunately, 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.
- eyelidlessness 3y agoFortunately you’re a descriptivist, unfortunately you’re stubborn about it ;)
- satvikpendem 3y agoHow so? You'd be the descriptivist in this scenario, no?
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- danparsonson 3y agoRight - an obvious example being "married couple"
- meowtimemania 3y agoi'm from the western united states and have always understood "a couple of ___" to be more than 2.
- runlevel1 3y agoUntil 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.
- pxeger1 3y agoTFA says that you were right before 17. There is a lot of fuzziness in the words we use.
- KineticLensman 3y agoBrit 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.
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- worklaptopacct 3y agoI'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.
- stavros 3y agoAlso 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.
- iteria 3y agoI'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
- fknorangesite 3y ago> if you've gotten to five, you're pushing it. I agree; five is right out.
- gizajob 3y agoWell 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
- botanical 3y agoSame in South Africa; I was surprised to hear "a couple" can mean more than two.
- Waterluvian 3y agoCanada 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.”
- didgeoridoo 3y agoI 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.)
- stvltvs 3y agoI'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.
- Spoom 3y agoI'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.
- b112 3y agoIn 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.
- chromatin 3y agoContrary 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.
- pohl 3y agoImagine 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?
- mauvehaus 3y agoIf he's like me, he's in trouble often enough with just one woman in his life...
- layer8 3y ago> she asked “since when does a couple mean two?” Sounds like she’s into polygamy? ;)
- thwarted 3y agoMy 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?"