Please can someone just clarrify, to settle an argument

[mountainboo]

A couple = 2
A few = 3/4
Several = 5
Please, because mrmountainboo thinks a couple is 3 (duh), a few is 4 or 5 and several is more. Thanks

[~Vulpine~]

I'd agree with you, a couple is definitely 2, but I think 3 is a few and anything over that is several.

[weeal]

yeah what would mrmountainboo know - he's a guy !

2 = couple
simple
lol

[starmack]

3 = a crowd?

[jno]

two is definitely a couple, but the others are pretty much what you want them to be. For instance if only a few people in a football stadium were cheering, that might mean a couple of hundred, against the thousands who weren't. I think several does mean more than a few, though.

[Beads]

2 is defo a couple! Give him the example as ''ooh we met a nice couple on holiday'' !!!

[Psychick]

A couple is definately 2. As for the rest, I think theyre more flexible. I normally say a few is 3/4/5. Anything over is several.

[Robinia]

mmm, my ex always got mixed up too..he'd often say he'd had a couple of pints when clearly he meant several. :o)

[mountainboo]

Cheers everybody x

[beejaybee]

A couple in hour house is anything over 1 as in couple of sweets/biscuits/ I`ll only be a couple of minutes" lol

[WoWo]

As beejaybee says it doesn't always have to mean two exactly it can mean more than two.

The whole point of words like couple/few/Several is they are not specific.

[thorfinn]

A few and several can be the same number - they can show that the writer means not that many (a few), or more than expected or acceptable (several).

Both these examples could describe a period of five minutes:

A few minutes later lunch was on the table.

The phone rang for several minutes before anyone picked up.