A Few Thoughts On Precision
A couple, a few, several: these are handy terms in English when you don’t want to (or can’t) specify exactly how many of something you’re talking about. You see people walking their dogs on a nice day and you comment that you saw “a few” because you don’t feel it’s necessary to relay an exact number. You see “several” birds fly overhead because you couldn’t count them by them time they were gone and because frankly it doesn’t matter. You felt “a couple” raindrops on your way home—you get the idea.
I used to think that this was efficient and harmless until a few years ago. There was some serious discussion around whether or not the use of these words to describe approximate quantities was appropriate in a certain professional context. So, I figured I would just find a good reference for the ranges of each of these words and we’d be able to at least frame the discussion around those well-established and helpful conventions.
Wrong: nobody really agrees on how many a couple, a few or several are.
To be clear, I’m very certain that I’m correct when I say “a couple” and I mean 2—possibly 3. A “few” has always felt like it was between 4 and 6 or 7; maybe more. But “several” means between 6 and 8, or from 5 to 9. Whatever the range “several” covers, it should average out to seven. If you say “several”, you should be thinking “I’m pretty sure there were seven, but I’m going to give myself a little wiggle room just in case a photograph surfaces later.” I mean, “seven” is practically the root of the word “several”.
But, no. Some people believe that “several” can mean as few as 3, which is patently ridiculous, if you consider the following equation:
several = seven = 7
Some people believe that “a few” can mean as few as 2, which also seems absurd: scientifically, that’s “a couple”. And I can’t even begin to understand what kind of brain damage people have suffered in order to believe that “a couple” can refer to as many as four of something.
I used to think I understood what people meant when they said that they spent several hours painting a room last weekend. Now I wonder if they’re the kind of freaks who think that “several” just means more than two.
And I do find it a little distressing that there could be some overlap between “a few” and “several”. How do you choose between using one of those terms over the other? How they sound in a sentence? If you feel like uttering 3 syllables or only 2? (Which, let’s face it, is really only a couple of syllables in either case.)
So now I find myself avoiding using all all of these terms but “a couple” because I feel like there’s no solid ground to stand on any more and it’s just annoying. I’ve switched to using actual ranges when it matters (“about 5 minutes until dinner”; not “a few”) and just saying “a bunch” for everything else.