[_carbyau_]

Definitions are surprisingly varied. I see these words as being something to be cautious about.

For me:

couple(formal) = 2

couple(informal) = 2-3

few = 3-5

half-dozen = 6

[gap]

ten-or-so = 9-11

dozen(formal) = 12

dozen-ish(informal) = 11-14

And don't get me started on "this Friday" vs "next Friday"...

[smcl]

"this Friday" vs "next Friday" should be unambiguous except some people abuse "next Friday" and cause problems.

[MegaDeKay]

How about when a recipe tells you to let something soak / marinate / rise / whatever "overnight". When really should I start? When really does it end? Is 8am one day to 4pm the next day (32h) the same as 9pm one day to 7am the next day (10h)?

[jjcob]

I think for a lot of things it doesn't matter, so either 10h or 32h are okay (eg. soaking beans, marinating meat). If it says overnight I assume the time doesn't really matter that much.

[sebastiennight]

Unless you're marinating your meat with pineapple, in which case it can end badly...

The day I learned that the acidic feel of pineapples comes from it actually digesting you instead of the opposite is the day I stopped using them.

[jjcob]

Yeah, I use pear to marinate thinly sliced beef (my variant of bulgogi). I wouldn't let that marinate overnight either. An hour or so is enough. Too much pear for too long and the meat becomes so soft it almost falls apart.

[darkwater]

> The day I learned that the acidic feel of pineapples comes from it actually digesting you instead of the opposite is the day I stopped using them.

Wait, what?

[maxerickson]

News to me too. Pineapple contains an enzyme that breaks down proteins:

https://www.thespruceeats.com/flesh-eating-enzymes-of-pineap...

[tobinfekkes]

My wife and I just discovered that we have different beliefs about "this Friday" vs. "Next Friday". I never even knew there was another possibility, so it's cool to see this mentioned here so soon after.

[Daneel_]

"This Friday" is the one during the current week, provided it's currently earlier than Friday. If it's Saturday/Sunday already and I want to talk about the Friday that's only 5 days away I would say "this coming Friday" (or just "Friday").

"Next Friday" is always a week+ away. If it's Tuesday and I say "next Friday", I ALWAYS mean the day 10 days away.

If someone says "next Friday" to me and they mean the one in a few days I'll look at them like they're crazy.

[zippyman55]

This next Friday, I’ll be next to my girl Friday.

[aspenmayer]

What if they say “Friday week”?

[nerdile]

Native US English speaker here, and this is the first time I have ever heard of this. TIL

[aspenmayer]

Every time I hear it, it befuddles me just like the first time. It seems like a syntax error or something. My mind literally reels, like the idea is a fish and I can nearly feel the fishing line drag but the syntax and grammar isn’t rigidly applied, and so I can’t increase the tension or the line will snap, as it isn’t rated for this hefty and impactful of an idea as when something occurs specifically. I don’t know if that fish story adds anything, but I realized that there was some potential for wordplay that helps explain how it feels perceptually to hear these English words in nonstandard order from someone to whom it is standard. It’s strange.

[myself248]

It's like saying "half ten" instead of "ten thirty". There's a missing word, it's "half past ten", it's "friday next week".

[antod]

Reasonably commonly used in Commonwealth countries.

Next Friday is sometimes too ambiguous, you can never be sure you share the same definition with the other person. Is it the same as This Friday (the very next occurring Friday), or Friday Week (ie next week's Friday).

[frereubu]

I always thought of "Friday week" as "Friday plus a week" rather than "next week's Friday".

[aspenmayer]

I heard it used this way in Australia, and I’ve heard it now and then in British TV programs. Only have heard it among very old timers in isolated areas in the US a few times when I was very young previously.

[kiwijamo]

Never seen or heard this in New Zealand from native speakers.

[Daneel_]

That always means "two Fridays from now" - so if it's Tuesday, then they mean next Friday.

I use "<day> week" in conversation, but I'd say it's falling out of favour. I mostly use it with my parents.

[aspenmayer]

What if the person saying that means “Friday this week” sometimes and “Friday next week” other times? How can you know that they don’t from an isolated utterance? Can you know with reasonable certainty that the person saying it knows what you think they mean?

From context you might know if it seems like they know how to use the phrase, but I always struggle to understand these quirks, perhaps because I heard these terms as an adult and haven’t used them much myself, or been exposed to them and the context enough to immerse myself in the colloquial usage by diffusion.

This is close to weird constructions like “x is deceptively y” like “the dog is deceptively large” which, without already knowing the size of the dog, makes me feel like a dunce because I don’t know while not giving me enough specificity to know if the the largeness is what is deceptive or just the perception of the largeness. It’s a syntactical tarpit.

> I use "<day> week" in conversation, but I'd say it's falling out of favour. I mostly use it with my parents.

I am a native English (US) speaker, and I think it’s a British English thing perhaps, as I heard it all the time in Australia, along with other week-related terms like fortnight.

[d1sxeyes]

> What if the person saying that means “Friday this week” sometimes and “Friday next week” other times?

Well, I suppose they could, but then what if they meant Thursday?

“Friday week” is surprisingly unambiguous. It always means “count forward from today until a Friday, then add a week”. Its partner is “Friday coming”, which is “count forward until a Friday”.

[Macha]

The second Friday from today

[aspenmayer]

> The second Friday from today

What if it’s Friday where you are, but isn’t for me yet? Would that be a week from tomorrow or two weeks from tomorrow, for me or for you?

[Macha]

Luckily

(a) I generally don’t schedule things in the middle of the night

and

(b) it’s well understood amongst my social circles that if you’re for some reason trying to schedule something at the end of a party at 2am Friday then for basically all purposes it’s still Thursday

—-

But also once time zones are involved it’s better to just give a date, time and zone for clarity. That doesn’t mean people need to apply the same to their personal life and use it even where shorthand is unambiguous.

[Daneel_]

I'd go off the timezone of whoever made the statement, but honestly this is where it's better to simply clarify by saying "just checking, that's in 8 days, yeah?" or similar.

[RajT88]

My wife and I have a disagreement about "the other day".

I use it to mean, a time up to two years ago. She uses it to mean up to no more than a month.

I think the disagreement is because I have a better memory - two years ago does not feel so distant to me. It is a silly and fun thing to argue about, leading to some agreements on terminology:

A while ago - 2- 10 years

Back in the day - 10+ years ago

And just to troll her, I boldly make the claim, "just now" means any time between now and a week ago.

[_carbyau_]

Oh no, a whole new bunch of time-wimey words I hadn't even considered! :-)

I'm no authority but to me using "the other day" as a phrase is trying to impart a rough reference to a point in time.

Which means we're talking in "day" timeframes where week or month wouldn't be suitable. I would expect "the other day" to be within a week, but accept no more than a month.

Similarly "some months ago" = probably less than 6 months but definitely no more than a year.

The world is a wonderful place and the ways we humans can confuse communication seemingly knows no bounds. But I don't want a proscriptive definition for each little casual phrase as I think this flexibility in language is why it keeps changing and being alive!

[Zobat]

I'd claim that the time ranges for these depend on what we're talking about.

"I had a sandwich a while ago" is wastly different from "they had a child a while ago".

"The other day" and "back in the day" might not differ as much but still...

[alanbernstein]

https://oxtweekend.com/

[dawatchusay]

Where does “several” fall on your spectrum?

[_carbyau_]

Not that I'm any authority but I'd use "several" interchangeably with "few". The sibling comment suggestion of using it in the [gap] does make sense though...

[jamwil]

Several is the gap

[barbs]

Took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that "several" didn't mean "about seven"

[rkaid]

There was a contestant on a recent season of Survivor who, iirc, gave up on a challenge because the host said it would take "several hours" to finish. Later the contestant explained that "last I checked several means seven", and about an hour into the challenge he realized he wouldn't last for seven hours, so he quit.. (When the host said "several hours" I believe he meant about 4 hours)

This of course led to much ridicule and many memes in the fandom, and Survivor even titled the seventh episode of that season "Episode Several". In post-season interviews the contestant is still adamant that several means seven.

[ta8903]

As a kid I always thought "few" was ~5 and "several" was ~7.

[iechoz6H]

In most contexts that wouldn't be a terrible translation.

[williamscales]

I like the definition of several as “more than two but fewer than many”

[aspenmayer]

“How many times more (than two)?”

“Several..?”

[Daneel_]

don't forget:

several = 5-10

handful = 10-20

Personally, after having worked in a hardware store, I always confirm. "grab me a couple of those please" - "is two enough, or do you need a few extra?"

I'm one of those people for whom a couple is 3-5, but never 2. I would just say "two".

[onionisafruit]

Handful is 5 unless you are talking about something that can physically fit in your hand ( in that case it’s however much can fit in your hand ).

[Daneel_]

Handful is more than "several" to me, and several tops out around 10, hence 10-20 being a handful.

Anything that's a word instead of a precise number implies a range to me (eg, few, handful, several).

[onionisafruit]

Despite coming across like I was trying to correct you, I only meant to give my personal understanding of “handful”

I don’t know where I got my idea of handful, but it probably came from how high I can count using the fingers on one hand. So far that understanding seems to work for me when other people say it as long as I do what you said and treat it as an approximation.

On the “several” topic, I used to think it meant “about seven” because of the shared “sev” prefix, but it didn’t take long to realize several has a much bigger range than that.

[_carbyau_]

This is what I love about language. "several" and "handful" have waaay different meanings to me.

In practice my immediate response for "several" would be to use it interchangeably with "few". 3-5.

But all these comments make me think that maybe it should fill my [gap] at "seven-ish". I mean, the "seve" bit does kinda lend itself.

[0] Tangentially, several is from 'Medieval Latin separalis "separable," ' as in '(as in went their several ways)' . So to link it with "seven" would be a weird thing to do but I imagine this kind of thing happens with a living language.

[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/several

As for "handful"... you and I are worlds apart on that one! :-P Hand has four fingers, five digits. So "handful" is 4-5 for me. But as other comments alluded, if the [thing] is a batch of small something (like sand) then it's simply how much you can grasp.

As I mentioned these words have surprisingly varied definitions between people! One of the wonders of a living language.

[throwaway422432]

I think it depends on where you grow up.

Still not as amorphous as the word "now" and its various prefixes when it comes to South Africans and time.

[867-5309]

a couple is always two. anything more is several, up to half a dozen

[Daneel_]

So if I said "hand me a couple of screws, would you?" - you'd give me exactly 2? If you know you want an exact number I would always use the exact number. I'd never say "give me a dozen screws", I'd just say "give me 12 screws". Named quantities are almost always a range rather than a definitive number as far as I'm concerned.

[867-5309]

indeed I would hand you two. if you asked for double next time, surely you'd expect four

[_carbyau_]

> a couple is 3-5, but never 2

For me it depends on the formality. For example, a married couple is never more than two people.

[Daneel_]

Ahh, that's different than referring to a count of things though - you can't hand a couple of married people to someone, for example. But "Hand me a couple of screws, would you?" - I'd pass them 3-4 screws, not 2.

[goopypoop]

I'd like a handful of bowling balls, please.

[Daneel_]

I mean, sure. That doesn't necessarily seem like a weird statement to me.

It's more than several, but still a manageable number.

[goopypoop]

Great! In that case I'll take two handfuls of bowling balls and several wheelbarrows. Maybe I should get a couple (4) more wheelbarrows to be safe, bring it down to under 4 balls per barrow

[Daneel_]

If you're trying to provoke a "wait, that's not what I meant" response with that sarcasm, you won't get it :)

Use depends on context, like all language, and deliberately choosing a situation that doesn't suit the language will obviously result in confusion.

[goopypoop]

I'm just really enjoying the absurd scenario we've created

[dr_dshiv]

“I’m going to be a few minutes late”

Riiight

[dripdry45]

Several or handful would be 7-11 in my book

[starsep]

https://xkcd.com/1070/