| Library / English Dictionary |
A COUPLE OF
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
More than one but indefinitely small in number
Example:
a couple of roses
Synonyms:
a couple of; a few
Classified under:
Similar:
few (a quantifier that can be used with count nouns and is often preceded by 'a'; a small but indefinite number)
Context examples:
I have been playing at nine-pins, he answered, and have lost a couple of farthings.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
"His eyes was pretty shiny," she confessed; "and he didn't have no collar, though he went away with one. But mebbe he didn't have more'n a couple of glasses."
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
There was a fellow with a wen in his neck, larger than five wool-packs; and another, with a couple of wooden legs, each about twenty feet high.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Though the sample will be small – only a couple of pounds at most – it will be a time capsule of sorts recording our solar system's creation.
(Evening Launch Catapults OSIRIS-REx Toward Asteroid Encounter, NASA)
Just write a couple of messages for me: ‘Sumner, Shipping Agent, Ratcliff Highway.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
This suggests that Enceladus' ocean of liquid water might be only a couple of miles beneath this region — closer to the surface than previously thought.
(Cassini Sees Heat Below the Icy Surface of Enceladus, NASA)
There was nothing in the office but a couple of wooden chairs and a deal table, behind which sat a small man with a head that was even redder than mine.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
After a couple of minutes' unbroken silence, Henry, turning to Catherine for the first time since her mother's entrance, asked her, with sudden alacrity, if Mr. and Mrs. Allen were now at Fullerton?
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
The nearest of these was the hamlet of Tredannick Wollas, where the cottages of a couple of hundred inhabitants clustered round an ancient, moss-grown church.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It can't be more than a couple of hundred yards.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
