Rose works at a trailer shop south central Pennsylvania and often hears her co-workers adding the element -couple to a round number to indicate an indefinite amount, such as “bring me twenty-couple screws,” in the same way that others might say “bring me twenty-odd screws.” It’s not all that common, but it’s out there. More well-established for indefinite quantities are the terms couple-three, couple-few, and a couple-two-three. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Adding -Couple to a Number to Indicate “Approximately””
Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Rose calling from South Central PA.
South Central PA, welcome to the show. What are you thinking about linguistically today?
I work at a trailer shop with a bunch of mechanics, and I’ve noticed that a few of them use an expression like, if you wanted to get 27 screws, you’d say 20 couple. And I hadn’t encountered it anywhere else before, and I asked them about it, and nobody seems to know where it came from. So I thought I’d ask you guys.
Interesting. And are they all from that same part of the country?
I think so.
So instead of 27, they would say 20 couple?
Yes.
And would that be the same for 23 or 25?
Yes.
So it’s kind of like saying 20 odd screws.
Yeah.
20 some odd, something like that.
20 some odd, yeah.
Yeah.
What’s really interesting, I think you might have found what I would call an unpolished diamond here. Because if you dig around on this term, I can find no slang dictionary or dialect dictionary or any linguistic resource that has touched upon the idea of using couple attached to a number in this way to represent some unknown quantity. I mean, obviously, obviously couple on its own can sometimes mean two, three or even four. But attaching it in this way to a number is really unusual.
When I look this up on the internet and newspapers and discussion forums, I find what looks like a nice tight circle of usage in places like Maryland, Virginia, York, PA, Gettysburg, PA, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Winston-Salem is kind of the outlier here, but you could draw a kind of odd-shaped oval around all those cities, which might suggest that there’s a geographic nature to it. I would need a lot more data to prove that.
So if I had the time, I would be spending a couple days trying to figure this one out. I think you found something nice here.
A couple days?
That’s really interesting.
Yeah, a couple few maybe.
Yeah, what is really well established is the term couple three, which is just kind of across the United States in the north. Couple three, meaning a few, meaning someplace between two and four. It’s odd. But couple few exists. That’s widespread, including the American South, right? Or couple two, three.
Couple two, three. Also, meaning more than just two.
Interesting. I do find people using couple in this way following on a number. It’s usually a nice round number, right? Does that sound correct to you, Rose?
Yeah.
So it would be like 20 couple or 50 couple. It would never be 52 couple.
No, yeah.
I find it as far back in newspapers as 1979, which gives us at least a beginning of a starting date to it being common. And that was in a Pennsylvania newspaper.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
How about that?
It’s neat. Because I do. I live in York County, and there are a lot of strange little colloquialisms. Someday I’m going to write a book. There are a couple books written about Pennsylvania speech, so dig around for those. You might find them at the Chamber of Commerce type of tourist spots.
Yeah.
We really appreciate you calling.
Thank you.
Take care.
Thanks, Rose.
Bye-bye.
Me too. Bye.
Well, we want your calls about how they speak out your way, 877-929-9673, or tell us an email, words@waywordradio.org.
