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8 votes
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The Gävle goat
9 votes -
The rise and fall of rationality in language
7 votes -
On communicating accurately with Americans
11 votes -
Twitter, the intimacy machine
7 votes -
This wealthy Dallas church owns the most clergy homes in Texas — and it costs taxpayers six figures a year
11 votes -
"Sword breakers" were rare and we don't know much about them. How were they used and what were they really for? Two experienced rapier fencers experiment with one to discover more about them.
11 votes -
On progress and historical change
5 votes -
Supreme Court weighs mandating public funds for religious schools in Maine
8 votes -
Taming the Beast: The Inner Battle for Control
3 votes -
Tenement Museum virtual tour
7 votes -
Avenging Varus - The Roman Germanic Wars
2 votes -
Recycled Russian warheads fuel US power plants (2013)
6 votes -
Dancing mania
5 votes -
What to do when the KKK shoots and other lessons from Houston’s underground paper
2 votes -
Little-known Black history comes to light in new documentary series
2 votes -
Violence and protest
6 votes -
The Eighteenth Elephant
6 votes -
100 years of whatever this will be
12 votes -
Beware the fallacy bully
7 votes -
The town where holding fireworks over your head is a tradition
6 votes -
Pompeii still has buried secrets - The first major excavations in decades shed light on how ordinary citizens shopped and snacked—and where slaves slept
6 votes -
The surprisingly strange history of Thanksgiving (and other turkey day trivia)
4 votes -
The melancholy decline of the semicolon
17 votes -
Disney’s FastPass: A complicated history
14 votes -
Where the humanities aren't in crisis
3 votes -
How a New Hampshire libertarian utopia was foiled by bears
26 votes -
The ancient origins of glass
4 votes -
Longstanding discourse w/ my SO about the phrase "a couple of..."
#couple Defined as: noun: couple; plural noun: couples 1. two individuals of the same sort considered together. "a couple of girls were playing marbles" a pair of partners in a dance or game....
#couple
Defined as:noun:
couple;
plural noun: couples
1.
two individuals of the same sort considered together.
"a couple of girls were playing marbles"a pair of partners in a dance or game.
MECHANICS
a pair of equal and parallel forces acting in opposite directions, and tending to cause rotation about an axis perpendicular to the plane containing them.
2.
two people who are married, engaged, or otherwise closely associated romantically or sexually.
"in three weeks the couple fell in love and became engaged"3.
INFORMAL
an indefinite small number.
"he hoped she'd be better in a couple of days"
verb:
couple;
3rd person present:
couples
past tense:
coupled
past participle:
coupled
gerund or present participle:
coupling
1.
combine."a sense of hope is coupled with a palpable sense of loss"
join to form a pair.
"the beetles may couple up to form a pair"2.
mate or have sexual intercourse.
"as middle-class youth grew more tolerant of sex, they started to couple more often"
#Discourse of the use of the word/phrase in this particular case
You
"how many would you like?"
Them
"just a couple."
When someone requests 'a couple of...' I respond with something similar to: 'How many do you want specifically?', which leads to the discourse of, 'A couple is two, a few is >2, several is <x' and so on.
I agree with the first two clearly stated definitions of 'couple', but in the informal use of a couple (eg. a depiction of a quantity) is not specifically two...nor is 'a few' three. How many specifically is several..?
I understand the semantics within the conversation. But, the expectation of understanding that two, and only two, is implied in the use of the phrase 'a couple' in a request; is ambiguously stating what one party desires. I'm the asshole now, just tell me how many you want.
And now...your thoughts, please.
12 votes -
The Varangian Guard | Units of History
5 votes -
America's forgotten vampire panic
7 votes -
Machine learning for moral judgments
3 votes -
The jet that terrified the West: The MiG-25 Foxbat
7 votes -
Search for Jimmy Hoffa leads the FBI to Jersey City landfill
8 votes -
The name for Britain comes from our ancient love of tattoos
6 votes -
Music and Connection -- Yo-Yo Ma
4 votes -
How many people have Q Clearance?
10 votes -
David Graeber’s Possible Worlds
11 votes -
Liberal hypocrisy is fueling American inequality. Here’s how.
15 votes -
French Catholics agree to sell property to compensate abuse victims
9 votes -
Decolonizing Idaho’s road signs - A new effort will add Indigenous history to historical markers across the state
4 votes -
An extraordinary 500-year-old shipwreck is rewriting the history of the age of discovery
10 votes -
Ace Linguist: Dialect Dissection: ABBA
5 votes -
WWII animated: Second Sino-Japanese War 1937-1941
4 votes -
Improving MIT’s written commitment to freedom of expression
4 votes -
The SAS Iranian Embassy siege, 1980 - Animated
5 votes -
This tribe helped the Pilgrims survive for their first US Thanksgiving. They still regret it 400 years later.
8 votes -
A very quick lesson on the southern accent
5 votes -
Much of what you've heard about Carter and Reagan is wrong
11 votes -
Dead as a doornail
3 votes