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Sometimes the simplest word or phrase can cause the biggest headache. Couple is one of those words.
You may have heard that the word couple must always be followed by the word of, but is that true? Is couple always followed by of?
The short answer is no. The medium-length answer is most of the time. The long answer takes up the majority of this article.
Couple is both a noun and a verb. It isn’t officially, however, an adjective. At least not according to many dictionaries. (Merriam-Webster Online does list couple as an adjective.) And yet we sometimes use couple as an adjective, which can cause problems.
We don’t have trouble using couple as a verb—Coupled with strong earnings, the new product line had Bill’s company sitting pretty.
We also don’t have trouble when we treat couple as a noun—The long-married couple was looking forward to retirement.
As a noun, couple, like pair, traditionally means two of something. And yet in reality, couple is also used as a substitute for few—He gave a few of his mom’s cookies to his girlfriend/he gave a couple of his mom’s cookies to his girlfriend; a few dogs ran down the street; a couple of dogs ran down the street.
And this introduces the major problem with the use of couple—we’ve started to use it as an adjective—a couple dogs ran down the street.
You’ll find plenty of people to tell you that you can never follow couple with a plural noun without including of between the two nouns. On the other hand, some will acknowledge that there are allowances. Another group will say that it’s okay to skip of after couple in informal contexts but that you should maintain the pairing of the words in formal writing. And still others say that word use is changing and we should accept the change and go with what people actually use.
What I want to do is give you an idea of when you should stick with couple of and when you can safely use couple without of.
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■ In both American English (AmE) and British English (BrE), use couple before words of degree (more, less).
A couple more women showed up at the station to complain about the man’s behavior.
The total had been a couple more than he’d expected.
■ In AmE, use couple most of the time before words of time and number. In this use, we’re definitely treating couple like an adjective. Couple without of is likely to be increasingly more common for these expressions, although couple of can usually be used for most of them.
The chef handed his assistant a couple dozen bent spoons.
The plane wouldn’t arrive for a couple hours. The plane wouldn’t arrive for a couple of hours.
She only had a couple zillion more cakes to bake before she could go home.
The cavalry arrived a couple minutes later. The cavalry arrive a couple of minutes later.
I needed a couple thousand dollars to pay the debt. I was a couple of thousand short.
Can you use couple without of in BrE for words of time and number? From what I understand, the practice isn’t widespread, so you may want to use couple of in nearly all cases. For Canadian and Australian audiences, I’d guess that omitting the of might be increasingly common for time and number references. I’m only guessing here, however. Perhaps those of you who write for Canadian or Australian audiences will share your knowledge.
■ In formal writing (school papers, nonfiction books, dissertations, business reports, journal articles) in both BrE and AmE, use couple of when a plural noun follows (except as noted above).
The lawyer introduced his client to a couple of meth dealers.
Because of contamination, a couple of experiments will need to be repeated.
Some U.S. newspapers, blogs, or magazines may be informal and allow the use of couple alone.
■ In dialogue for both AmE and BrE, use either couple or couple of when the noun couple comes before a plural noun depending on what the character would use. (Do the same for a character’s thoughts in first person and in third person with deep POV.) However, do note that couple alone, if used frequently, may cause readers to silently insert the of. So while a few uses of couple might sound fine to readers, multiple uses might sound jarring. Or even irritating.
Most characters who speak British English would probably use couple of in most instances, and yet a character who watches a lot of American TV or who reads a lot of American books might well use couple without of.
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Couple and couple of—just a word and a short phrase. But they can cause problems when they’re used incorrectly. The next time couple comes up in your writing or editing, be sure to give the word an extra bit of attention.
Tags: adjectives, noun Posted in: Grammar & Punctuation
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I live somewhere near the middle of Canada. In speech, we say “Wanna get a couple o’ cokes?” I wouldn’t write it with the apostrophe, though; I would write of. I don’t think I know anyone who would say “couple cokes.”
Thanks, Timothy. That’s just the kind of info I hoped some folks would share. Would you ever say something like—It’s just a couple miles down the road or just a couple more minutes, Mom?
I’m from Australia and to not say ‘of’ sounds so unnatural. I find it very distracting when I read a book that omits the ‘of’. It just feels wring 🙂
Also, as per your point …. Couple vs Few …… I’ve grown up with the understanding that ‘couple’ is two, and ‘few’ is more than two (generally 3)
S.W., so maybe dropping of really is just a U.S. thing. Do you even use the of before time and number words, as in the sentences I included in the reply to Timothy?
And thanks so much for adding to the discussion. This is good information.
I would definitely include ‘of’ in both sentences you quoted for Timothy.
It may be because you are describing a number of something, not a number something.
A couple of chickens … not .. a couple chickens.
A couple of moments … not … a couple moments.
Thanks for that post Editor. You’ve brought to my cognizance the use of “couple”.
Great article.
Thanks, one more tool in my editing check list.
Thanks for your take on the question. I’m firmly in the camp of people who expect an of after couple — almost always. I’m an American closer to age 60 than 50, and I came here because I am seeing couple minus an of in some of the self-published fiction I read. It drives me to distraction because it jars me and makes me think of typos.
That’s why I came, too! I agree with you.
This post is four years old, and in the last few years, the dropping of “of” after couple seems, to my reading, to have accelerated rapidly. I’m seeing “couple [noun]”, with couple clearly as an adjective meaning “more than one but not numerous” all over, increasingly in writing, and in increasingly formal venues.
In my spoken idiolect, the “of” in “a couple of…” had long lost its “f” in almost all situations. It’s “a couple a”, phonetically, in almost all spoken situations except the most formal. (Grew up in Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s).
One example I saw in some other postings troubles me. It read “Ian collected a couple dozen eggs”. Oddly, neither “a couple dozen eggs” NOR “a couple of dozen eggs” sounds quite idiomatic to my brain… they are BOTH awkward, though if forced, I would prefer “a couple of dozen…” One of those situations where I would prefer to switch to “several”.
The idea that “a couple of” primarily means “two” never corresponded to my idiom. “A couple of” _could_ be two, but it most definitely could be three or four, too… but not 7 or 8.
I think the reason many people consider “a couple of …” as referencing two of something is the use of couple to describe two people.
Dropping the “of” may very well be evolution of language but, for some of us, a nonsensical evolution doesn’t sit well. If I said, “I’m going to the store to buy a pair shoes.” those who defend dropping “of” after “couple” would think I was an idiot.
Coupling means the joining of two things into a couple, i.e. a pair, whether it refers to people or railway carriages. If you cannot substitute ‘pair’ for ‘couple’ in the sentence and still have it be grammatical then you shouldn’t be using ‘couple’. All this descriptivist nonsense above is what you get when your education system is collapsing.
In American English this is changing rapidly, and I think it’s a result of the way we speak. I dont think there was even a debate 30+ years ago – – certainly when I was in school & university, “a couple of” was the only accepted option in written English here, except for a few exceptions like “a couple more”. But when Americans speak, we abbreviate “a couple of things” as ” a coupl’a things”. That sounds almost exactly the same as “a couple things”, and and I suspect that’s how the word “of” began to be dropped. It used to bother me whenever I saw it, but I realize now that language is always evolving.
But “couple” isn’t unique in this regard. I wonder whether we’ll soon be switching from “plenty’a people” to “” plenty people’, “a pair’a sneakers” to “a pair sneakers”, etc.