couple
couple
(kʌpəl )Word forms: plural, 3rd person singular present tense couples , present participle coupling , past tense, past participle coupled
1. quantifier
If you refer to a couple of people or things, you mean two or approximately two of them, although the exact number is not important or you are not sure of it.
Across the street from me there are a couple of police officers standing guard. [+ of]
I think the trouble will clear up in a couple of days. [+ of]
...a small working-class town in Massachusetts, a couple of hundred miles from New York City. [+ of]
...a couple weeks before the election.
I think I can play maybe for a couple more years.
Couple is also a pronoun.
I've got a couple that don't look too bad.
2. countable noun [with singular or plural verb]
The couple have no children.
...after burglars ransacked an elderly couple's home.
...an isolated spot popular with courting couples.
3. countable noun [with singular or plural verb]
A couple is two people that you see together on a particular occasion or that have some association.
...as the four couples began the opening dance.
They were an odd couple.
4. verb [usually passive]
If you say that one thing produces a particular effect when it is coupled with another, you mean that the two things combine to produce that effect.
...a problem that is coupled with lower demand for the machines themselves. [be VERB-ed + with]
Over-use of those drugs, coupled with poor diet, leads to physical degeneration. [VERB-ed]
This, coupled with the fact that flying machines remained universally a subject for jeers and derision, made the brothers secretive. [VERB-ed]
5. verb [usually passive]
If one piece of equipment is coupled to another, it is joined to it so that the two pieces of equipment work together.
Its engine is coupled to a semiautomatic gearbox. [be VERB-ed + to]
The various systems are coupled together in complex arrays. [be V-ed + together]
coupling singular noun [usually the NOUN of noun]
The technique requires the coupling of a particle accelerator and a mass spectrometer.
6. See also coupling
