Timeline for What does “a couple” mean to you, and what does “a few” mean to you?
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8 events
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| Jul 8, 2021 at 15:54 | comment | added | Drew | Regardless. Legal terminology is not general usage. In general usage, in my experience, "several" is just a vague count, and it never means two. The things referred to are of course necessarily separate, since countable. Two people are not several people, in general parlance (IME, American usage). I can't imagine you'd find many (likely not any) American English speakers who would use "several" to include the possibility of only two. (Even three is a stretch - "few" is more likely for that case.) | |
| Jul 8, 2021 at 10:49 | comment | added | Ben | @Drew No. Joint means joined together. Can be two or more, up to any number. Several means separately. Can be two or more, up to any number. Joint and several liability means you can be sued together or separately. | |
| Jul 7, 2021 at 16:39 | comment | added | Drew | I won't argue ;-). This may be British vs American usage; dunno. But as for joint and several meaning 2 or more: joint means 2, right? (It might even mean 2 or more in some contexts; dunno.) Joint and several describes two cases to be covered: (1) joint and (2) several, no? That joint and several might mean 2 or more doesn't imply that several means 2 or more. And of course legal jargon doesn't prescribe other usage. | |
| Jul 7, 2021 at 16:21 | comment | added | Ben | @Drew When I think of "several people" the number I imagine is seven, probably homophony. Nonetheless, "several" has a specific meaning, per the OED "Existing apart, separate". In e.g. law "joint and several" applied to obligations which fall on two or more persons each of whom may be held fully responsible. So two is the minimum for "several". | |
| Jul 7, 2021 at 15:40 | comment | added | Drew | To my mind, and googling dictionaries, several is more than two (but less than many). I would not consider two things to be several. | |
| Jul 6, 2015 at 10:04 | history | edited | Ben | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 24, 2013 at 12:48 | history | edited | Ben | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 24, 2013 at 12:15 | history | answered | Ben | CC BY-SA 3.0 |