different between pinch vs couple

English

Etymology

From Middle English pinchen, from Old French *pinchier, pincer (“to pinch”), from Vulgar Latin *pinci?re (“to puncture, pinch”), from possible merger of *puncti?re (“a puncture, sting”), from Latin puncti? (“a puncture, prick”) and *picc?re (“to strike, sting”), from Frankish *pikk?n, from Proto-Germanic *pikk?n? (“to pick, peck, prick”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /p?nt?/
• Rhymes: -?nt?

Verb

pinch (third-person singular simple present pinches, present participle pinching, simple past and past participle pinched)

1. To squeeze a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.

   The children were scolded for pinching each other.

   This shoe pinches my foot.

2. To squeeze between the thumb and forefinger.
3. To squeeze between two objects.
4. (slang, transitive) To steal, usually something inconsequential.

   Someone has pinched my handkerchief!
5. (slang, transitive) To arrest or capture.
6. (horticulture) To cut shoots or buds of a plant in order to shape the plant, or to improve its yield.
7. (nautical) To sail so close-hauled that the sails begin to flutter.
8. (hunting) To take hold; to grip, as a dog does.
9. (obsolete, intransitive) To be stingy or covetous; to live sparingly.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Gower to this entry?)

   • 1788, Benjamin Franklin (attributed), Paper

     the wretch whom avarice bids to pinch and spare

10. To seize; to grip; to bite; said of animals.
11. (figuratively) To cramp; to straiten; to oppress; to starve.

    to be pinched for money

    • c. 1610?, Walter Raleigh, A Discourse of War

      want of room […] which pincheth the whole nation

    • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture 2:

      The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room attitude, and the lives of saints are full of a kind of callousness to diseased conditions of body which probably no other human records show.

12. To move, as a railroad car, by prying the wheels with a pinch.
13. (obsolete) To complain or find fault.
    • 1809, Alexander Chalmers ed. The Works of the English Poets, from Cahucer to Cowper, Vol. 1, modern rendering of poem imputed to Geoffrey Chaucer, "A Ballad which Chaucer made in Praise or rather Dispraise of Women for their Doubleness":

      Therefore who so them accuse

      Of any double entencion,

      To speake, rowne, other to muse,

      To pinch at their condicion,

      All is but false collusion,

      I dare rightwell the sothe express,

      They have no better protection,

      But shrowd them vnder doubleness.

Derived terms

• pinch off
• pinch out
• pinch a loaf

Translations

Noun

pinch (plural pinches)

1. The action of squeezing a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.
2. A close compression of anything with the fingers.

   I gave the leather of the sofa a pinch, gauging the texture.

3. A small amount of powder or granules, such that the amount could be held between fingertip and thumb tip.
4. An awkward situation of some kind (especially money or social) which is difficult to escape.
   • 1955, Rex Stout, "Die Like a Dog", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, ?ISBN, page 171:

     It took nerve and muscle both to carry the body out and down the stairs to the lower hall, but he damn well had to get it out of his place and away from his door, and any of those four could have done it in a pinch, and it sure was a pinch.

5. A metal bar used as a lever for lifting weights, rolling wheels, etc.
6. An organic herbal smoke additive.
7. (physics) A magnetic compression of an electrically-conducting filament.
8. The narrow part connecting the two bulbs of an hourglass.
   • 2001, Terry Pratchett: Thief of Time:

     It looked like an hourglass, but all those little glittering shapes tumbling through the pinch were seconds.

9. (slang) An arrest.

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ??? (pinchi)

Translations

English

Alternative forms

• copel (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English couple, from Old French couple, from Latin c?pula. Doublet of copula.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?k?p?l/
• Rhymes: -?p?l

Noun

couple (plural couples)

1. Two partners in a romantic or sexual relationship.
   • 1729, Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal

     I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; […]

2. Two of the same kind connected or considered together.

   A couple fewer people show up every week.

   • 1839, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

     […] couple of tables; one of which bore some preparations for supper; while, on the other […]

3. (informal) A small number.
   • 1839, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

     A couple of billiard balls, all mud and dirt, two battered hats, a champagne bottle […]

   • 1891, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Red-Headed League

     ‘Oh, merely a couple of hundred a year, but the work is slight, and it need not interfere very much with one’s other occupations.’

   • 1902, A. Henry Savage Landor, Across Coveted Lands:

     When we got on board again after a couple of hours on shore […]
4. One of the pairs of plates of two metals which compose a voltaic battery, called a voltaic couple or galvanic couple.
5. (physics) Two forces that are equal in magnitude but opposite in direction (and acting along parallel lines), thus creating the turning effect of a torque or moment.
6. (architecture) A couple-close.
7. (obsolete) That which joins or links two things together; a bond or tie; a coupler.

   • I’ll keep my stables where
     I lodge my wife; I’ll go in couples with her;

Usage notes

• A traditional and still broadly accepted usage of couple is as a noun followed by "of" to mean "two", as in "a couple of people". In this usage, "a couple of" is equivalent to "a pair of".

• The very widespread use of the same expression (e.g. "a couple of people") to mean any small number is often considered informal but is in fact very old and often considered unobjectionable on all levels of style, sometimes even contradictorily by the same publication that labels this use as informal elsewhere on the same page, e.g. the American Heritage Dictionary.

  The farm is a couple of miles off the main highway [= a few miles away].

  We’re going out to a restaurant with a couple of friends [= a few friends].

  Wait a couple of minutes [= a few minutes].

• Couple or a couple is also used informally and formally as an adjective or determiner (see definition below) to mean "a few", in which case it is not followed by "of". Many usage manuals advise against this widespread use although the Merriam-Webster Dictionary points out that this use before a word indicating degree is standard in both US and UK English (e.g. "a couple more examples" or "a couple less problems"). Only its use before an ordinary plural noun is an Americanism, which the dictionary explains is "common in speech and in writing that is not meant to be formal or elevated". This use is especially frequent with numbers, time, and other measurements, such as "a couple hundred", "a couple minutes", and "a couple dozen".

Synonyms

• (two partners):
• (two things of the same kind): brace, pair; see also Thesaurus:duo
• (a small number of): few, handful

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

couple (not comparable)

1. (informal, US) Two or (a) small number of.

Determiner

couple

1. (colloquial, US) Two or a few, a small number of.

Verb

couple (third-person singular simple present couples, present participle coupling, simple past and past participle coupled)

1. (transitive) To join (two things) together, or (one thing) to (another).

   Now the conductor will couple the train cars.

   I've coupled our system to theirs.

2. (transitive, dated) To join in wedlock; to marry.
3. (intransitive) To join in sexual intercourse; to copulate.
   • 1987 Alan Norman Bold & Robert Giddings, Who was really who in fiction, Longman

     On their wedding night they coupled nine times.

   • 2001 John Fisher & Geoff Garvey, The rough guide to Crete, p405

     She had the brilliant inventor and craftsman Daedalus construct her an artificial cow, in which she hid and induced the bull to couple with her [...]

Synonyms

• (to join together): affix, attach, put together; see also Thesaurus:join
• (to join in wedlock): bewed, espouse; see also Thesaurus:marry
• (to join in sexual intercourse): have sex, make love; see also Thesaurus:copulate

Derived terms

• coupling (noun)
• coupling rod (a rod that couples)
• decouple, decoupled
• uncouple

Translations

References

Anagrams

• culpeo

French

Etymology

From Old French couple, from Vulgar Latin *c?pla, from Latin c?pula. Doublet of copule.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kupl/

Noun

couple m (plural couples)

1. two partners in a romantic or sexual relationship

2. (physics) a force couple; a pure moment
3. (mathematics) an ordered pair

Noun

couple f (plural couples)

1. (animal husbandry) An accessory used to tightly attach two animals next to each other by the neck.
2. (regional) a pair of something.
3. (Canada) a couple of something, not to be mistaken as a few.

Related terms

• couplage
• coupler

Further reading

• “couple” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• copule, copulé

Middle English

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Old French couple, from Latin c?pula.

Alternative forms

• cuple, copull, cupple, cople, coupull, cowpulle, copill, cupil

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?kup?l/, /?kupl?/, /?ku?p?l/

Noun

couple (plural couples or couple)

1. A couple; two people joined by a marital union or matrimony.
2. A pair of animals of opposing genders (in a breeding context)
3. A group of two things or animals, a pair (never three or more as in modern English)
4. A lead or tie linked to two dogs and used to restrain them.
5. A measurement for fruits, especially when dried.
6. (architecture) One of two opposing roof beams (or the two as a pair)
7. (rare) Sexual intercourse; the act of sex.

Derived terms

• couplen
• couplyng

Descendants

• English: couple
• Scots: couple, kipple

References

• “c?uple, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-11-06.

Etymology 2

Verb

couple

1. Alternative form of couplen

Old French

Alternative forms

• cople
• cuple

Etymology

From Vulgar Latin *copla, from Latin c?pula.

Noun

couple f (oblique plural couples, nominative singular couple, nominative plural couples)

1. couple (two things)
2. sexual liaison

Usage notes

• Occasionally used as a masculine noun (le couple)

Descendants