The American Heritage Book of English Usage. Columbia Encyclopedia World Factbook American Heritage Coll. A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. Only one couple was left on the dance floor. 1 a couple of .
Some people dislike the phrase a couple of for being inexact.
After all, saying you had a couple of friends over could mean you entertained two, six, or even more. But this inexactitude of a couple of may serve a useful purpose, suggesting that the writer is indifferent to the precise number of items involved. Thus the sentence She lives only a couple of miles away implies not only that the distance is short but that its exact measure is unimportant. For more on this, see collective noun under Grammar . All rights reserved.