# Enumerating the innumerable (a Poll)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enumerating-the-innumerable-a-poll/199097>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [September 2, 2003, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enumerating-the-innumerable-a-poll/199097 "2003-09-02T07:51:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2003, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enumerating-the-innumerable-a-poll/199097/21 "2003-09-04T09:29:47Z")

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[ul]  
[li] **a couple** - _almost_ exclusively two (the exception is when I am being evasive - “I’ll get back to you within a couple of days” - in these cases, ‘couple’ might mean ‘few’)[/li]  
[li] **a few** - three or more, but probably never reaching double digits and seldom more than five or six.[/li]  
[li] **a handful** [/li]- for small objects, literally (say, beans) - up to as many as could reasonably fit in my hand (or the hand of an average person, or the hand of the person I am instructing (I mention this because the person may be a child).

- for larger objects, figuratively (say, people) - no more than five

[li] **several** - three or more, upper range indeterminate, similar to **a few** [/li]  
[/ul]\*\*  
[/QUOTE]

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2003, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enumerating-the-innumerable-a-poll/199097/22 "2003-09-04T14:11:18Z")

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couple: usually two.

few: 3 to 5, usually. Unless I’m talking percentages, then all bets are off.

handful: 4 to 7, usually. When I do refer to this, which is rarely, I use it to refer to _non_-corporeal items, only a “handful” of which share a certain characteristic (as in, “only a handful of companies specialize in making 1920’s style “Death Rays””.)

several: 4 to 9, usually.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rockmotteller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@Rockmotteller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rockmotteller)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2003, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enumerating-the-innumerable-a-poll/199097/23 "2003-09-04T15:03:19Z")

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**a couple** - can only mean two.

**a few** - more than one, but not many.

**a handful** - it’s meaning depends on the context, but would almost always be in the range of “a few”. In the absence of context, I would say it means “roughly five”.

**several** - more than one, possibly many, but usually just “a few”.

Except for “a couple”, these all have a value relative to the meaning of “many” in my mind. If I had a million items in front of me and I separated out one hundred of them, I would feel as correct in saying “I separated a few” or “I separated several” as I would when talking about separating five items from fifty.

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