Usage Note for "couple"
Usage Note: When used to refer to two people who function socially as a unit, as in a married couple, the word couple may take either a singular or a plural verb, depending on whether the members are considered individually or collectively: The couple were married last week. Only one couple was left on the dance floor. When a pronoun follows, they and their are more common than it and its: The couple decided to spend their (less commonly its) vacation in Florida. Using a singular verb and a plural pronoun, as in The couple wants their children to go to college, is widely considered to be incorrect. Care should be taken that the verb and pronoun agree in number: The couple want their children to go to college. · Although the phrase a couple of has been well established in English since before the Renaissance, modern critics have sometimes maintained that a couple of is too inexact to be appropriate in formal writing. But the inexactitude of a couple of may serve a useful purpose, suggesting that the writer is indifferent to the precise number of items involved. Thus the sentence She lives only a couple of miles away implies not only that the distance is short but that its exact measure is unimportant. This usage should be considered unobjectionable on all levels of style. · The of in the phrase a couple of is often dropped in speech, but this omission is usually considered a mistake, especially in formal contexts. Three-fourths of the Usage Panel finds the sentence I read a couple books over vacation to be unacceptable; however, another 20% of the Panel finds the sentence to be acceptable in informal speech and writing.
/ˈkʌpəl/ noun plural couples
▪ a happily married couple ▪ “Are they a couple?” “No, they are just good friends.” ▪ Seventeen couples participated in the survey. ▪ The romance had gone out of their relationship, so they signed up for couples therapy. [=therapy in which a psychologist helps couples solve problems with their relationships]
▪ Can you give me a couple more examples? ▪ This one costs a couple less dollars than that one. ◊In informal U.S. English, a couple can be used like a couple of before a plural noun.
▪ I lost interest in the book after a couple chapters. ▪ We owned a couple dogs. ▪ We stopped for a couple drinks after work. It is often used with periods of time and numbers. ▪ I saw the movie a couple nights ago. ▪ We met a couple years ago. ▪ I took a couple weeks off. ▪ a couple hundred people ▪ a couple dozen
▪ “How many drinks have you had?” “Oh, just a couple.”
▪ It happened a couple of days ago. [=two days ago] ▪ I only had a couple of sips. ▪ Can you loan me a couple of dollars? ▪ I have a couple of favorite restaurants I go to. ▪ I'll be ready in a couple of minutes. [=I'll be ready soon] ▪ Our schedule is booked solid for the next couple of weeks. [=for the next two weeks] ▪ They've lost the last/previous couple of games.
/ˈkʌpəldəm/ noun [noncount] ▪ They are breaking up after eight years of coupledom. [=after eight years of being a couple]
▪ a device that makes it possible to couple the pieces ▪ The coils are loosely/tightly coupled.
▪ The wire is coupled to the terminal. ▪ It took an hour to couple the trailer to the truck.
▪ The exhibit couples poems with paintings. — usually used as (be) coupled with ▪ An oil spill coupled with [=combined with, together with] strong winds brought disaster. ▪ The team's win, coupled with a loss by their rivals, put them in first place.
/ˈkʌplɚ/ noun, plural cou·plers [count] ▪ The company manufactures trailer couplers. [=couplings, hitches]
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