(~s, coupling, ~d)
Frequency: The word is one of the 1500 most common words in English.
1.
If you refer to a ~ 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 ~ of police officers standing guard...
I think the trouble will clear up in a ~ of days.
...a small working-class town in Massachusetts, a ~ of hundred miles from New York City.
QUANT: QUANT of pl-n
•
Couple is also a determiner in spoken American English, and before ‘more’ and ‘less’.
...a ~ weeks before the election...
I think I can play maybe for a ~ more years.
DET
•
Couple is also a pronoun.
I’ve got a ~ that don’t look too bad.
PRON
2.
A ~ is two people who are married, living together, or having a sexual relationship.
The ~ have no children.
...after burglars ransacked an elderly ~’s home.
N-COUNT-COLL
3.
A ~ is two people that you see together on a particular occasion or that have some association.
...as the four ~s began the opening dance...
N-COUNT-COLL
4.
If you say that one thing produces a particular effect when it is ~d with another, you mean that the two things combine to produce that effect.
...a problem that is ~d with lower demand for the machines themselves...
Over-use of those drugs, ~d with poor diet, leads to physical degeneration...
= combine
VERB: usu passive, be V-ed with n, V-ed
5.
If one piece of equipment is ~d to another, it is joined to it so that the two pieces of equipment work together.
Its engine is ~d to a semiautomatic gearbox...
The various systems are ~d together in complex arrays.
VERB: usu passive, be V-ed to n, be V-ed together
6.
see also coupling