couple (was Re: assorted comments)

[James Harbeck]

One other word that's like "couple" in all this: "myriad", which
seems nearly as often now to appear as "a myriad things" as as "a
myriad of things." And because it's less frequent there's more
confusion about the "proper" way to use it. The usage without "of"
seems to apply almost exclusively to the less specific sense ("a
large number" rather than "ten thousand"), and in that usage we see
it as early as 1765 in OED.

Which leads me to wonder whether "couple" without "of" is used
significantly more in the looser "two or so" sense than in the
specific "exactly two" sense. Hmmm... worth a study and a paper,
perhaps: "Myriads and Couples: Adjectivization and inspecificity." Or
something of that ilk.

Ciao,
James Harbeck.

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