"It has happened a couple of times."

[jf@urbanists.social]

@fedward @futurebird this hurts my brain. one is a numeric measurement and one is volumetric. so it depends on the size of your granules.

[mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org]

@fedward @futurebird I think it depends on the total available. If it’s a small amount, a handful is more; if there’s a lot of it, a handful is less. So "a few" feels more stretchy to me.

Not a native speaker.

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@varx @fedward @futurebird in west Asian markets, a handful could mean the absolute most you can fit in your hands.

[ehashman@cloudisland.nz]

@piebob @futurebird I'm glad it's not just me!!

[psycodepath@mastodon.social]

@fedward @futurebird 6/7

[u0421793@toot.pikopublish.ing]

@futurebird a couple is definitely only ever two. Two things can be coupled together, eg train carriages. The process of coupling them is to couple one to another. A married couple is two, when you send a card to the happy couple, you’re not imagining well maybe three or four or five of them got married and I hope they’re happy like that. The happy couple is two. In cables, a coupling connector doesn’t couple a bunch of things into a big mess of signals, it’ll couple one connector to another connector. Couple is always exactly two.


Two

[pattykimura@beige.party]

@futurebird Depends on who is saying, and how dodgy, remorseful, or guilty they seem.

[moot@cyberplace.social]

@futurebird aagh I looked at the results before voting and now I am irreversibly biased!

[robotistry@mstdn.ca]

@futurebird It has happened at least two, possibly three, probably not four, and definitely not five or more times.

If it's definitely only two, I would say "It has happened twice."

[robotistry@mstdn.ca]

@michael_w_busch @fedward @futurebird It could mean either?

In the same way "a couple" could mean "precisely 2" or "at least 2 and below 5 but I am uncertain about the precise number and it might be only two".

A "handful of peanuts" is how many fit in your hand.

A "handful of horses" is around five.

[robotistry@mstdn.ca]

@dank @fedward @futurebird

Cookies:
pinch < one < couple < few/handful < some < bunch < lots/many < all

Pie:
fraction < half < most < all

[chamomile@furry.engineer]

@futurebird To me it means two-ish. More than 1, probably two, but possibly more.

[technicaladept@techhub.social]

@futurebird couple means two. But if I know of 2 times it doesn’t necessarily follow that I know of all the times it has happened.

[perrin42@mastodon.social]

@fedward @futurebird

Lot : Incest and a pillar of salt.

[mcduncanlab@mstdn.social]

@fedward @futurebird

I think it depends on the object measured.

A handful of sunflower seeds is quite a lot of sunflower seeds.

A handful of onions is 2-3.

A handful of kids is 4-8.

A handful of stars at twilight is between three and 20.

[lydiaconwell@todon.nl]

@u0421793 Yes, but 'a couple' is sometimes used colloquially to mean 'a few' @futurebird

[centretowner@urbanists.social]

@futurebird more than once, probably less than 6, but I don't care to look up the exact number for you.

[marthasterias@mastodon.green]

@futurebird i recently realised this might be a US/UK thing, in the UK it more often meant 2 (a couple or weeks = 2 weeks) while in the US it often meant a few.

[etnom@mastodon.world]

@jrdepriest @futurebird

To me, "It happened a couple of times" means a speaker has ruled out "it happened twice" since to say so would be too precise a statement: the event in question is somewhat loosely defined and smart people will disagree whether the 3rd, 4th or 5th occurrences count. We can all get behind the idea that at least two events unequivocally took place ("We've had a couple nice Presidents"), and there's a general consensus that there's not a whole lot more than that, if any.

[gobabu@mastodon.social]

@futurebird
It happened a cube or tesseract?