different between staple vs couple

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, US) IPA^(key): /?ste?.p?l/
• Rhymes: -e?p?l

Etymology 1

From Middle English staple, from Anglo-Norman estaple, Old French estaple (“market, (trading) post”), from Late Latin stapula, from Middle Dutch stapel (“pillar; foundation; market”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *stapulaz (“post”), from Proto-Indo-European *steb?- (“post, stem”). Compare staff.

Noun

staple (countable and uncountable, plural staples)

1. (now historical) A town containing merchants who have exclusive right, under royal authority, to purchase or produce certain goods for export; also, the body of such merchants seen as a group.
   • 1727, John Arbuthnot, Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights and Measures. Explain'd and exemplify'd in several dissertations

     The customs of Alexandria were very great, it having been the staple of the Indian trade.

   • 2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin 2012, p. 73:

     Calais was one of the ‘principal treasures’ of the crown, of both strategic and economic importance. It was home to the staple, the crown-controlled marketplace for England's lucrative textile trade, whose substantial customs and tax revenues flooded into Henry's coffers.

2. (by extension) Place of supply; source.
3. The principal commodity produced in a town or region.
4. A basic or essential supply.

5. A recurring topic or character.
   • 2010, The Economist, Jul-Aug 2010, p. 27:

     In most countries, rubbish makes headlines only when it is not collected, and stinking sacks lie heaped on the streets. In Britain bins are a front-page staple.

6. Short fiber, as of cotton, sheep’s wool, or the like, which can be spun into yarn or thread.

   Tow is flax with short staple.

7. Unmanufactured material; raw material.

Translations

Verb

staple (third-person singular simple present staples, present participle stapling, simple past and past participle stapled)

1. (transitive) To sort according to its staple.

Adjective

staple (not comparable)

1. Relating to, or being market of staple for, commodities.

2. Established in commerce; occupying the markets; settled.

   • To ruin with worse ware our staple trade

3. Fit to be sold; marketable.

   • What needy writer would not solicit to work under such masters, who will pay us beforehand, take off as much of our ware as we please, at our own rates, and trouble not themselves to examine, either before or after they have bought it, whether it be staple, or not.

4. Regularly produced or manufactured in large quantities; belonging to wholesale traffic; principal; chief.
   • 1818, Henry Hallam, View of the state of Europe during the Middle ages

     wool, the great staple commodity of England

   • 1929, M. Barnard Eldershaw, A House Is Built, Chapter VIII, Section ii:

     The pastoral industry, which had weathered the severe depression of the early forties by recourse to boiling down the sheep for their tallow, and was now firmly re-established as the staple industry of the colony, was threatened once more with eclipse.

Etymology 2

From Middle English stapel (“staple, pillar, post”), from Old English stapol (“post, pillar”), from Proto-Germanic *stapulaz, from Proto-Indo-European *steb?- (“post, stem”). See also Old English steppan (“to step”) and Old French estaple (“post”). Consider also stapes (“stirrup”), from Latin. Doublet of staple (etymology 1).

Noun

staple (plural staples)

1. A wire fastener used to secure stacks of paper by penetrating all the sheets and curling around.
2. A wire fastener used to secure something else by penetrating and curling.

   Can you believe they use staples to hold cars together these days?

3. A U-shaped metal fastener, used to attach fence wire or other material to posts or structures.

   The rancher used staples to attach the barbed wire to the fence-posts.
4. One of a set of U-shaped metal rods hammered into a structure, such as a piling or wharf, which serve as a ladder.

   Fortunately, there were staples in the quay wall, and she was able to climb out of the water.

5. (mining) A shaft, smaller and shorter than the principal one, joining different levels.
6. A small pit.
7. A district granted to an abbey.

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

8. (obsolete) A post; prop; support

Translations

Verb

staple (third-person singular simple present staples, present participle stapling, simple past and past participle stapled)

1. (transitive) To secure with a staple.

Derived terms

• stapler

Translations

See also

• Staple Hill

Anagrams

• Patels, leptas, palest, palets, pastel, peltas, petals, plates, pleats, septal, tepals

German

Verb

staple

1. inflection of stapeln:
   1. first-person singular present
   2. singular imperative
   3. first/third-person singular subjunctive I

Middle English

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Anglo-Norman staple (Old French estaple), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *stapulaz (“post, pillar; basis, foundation”). Doublet of stapel (“post, stake”).

Noun

staple (plural staples)

1. staple (official market established by royal authority for selling export goods)
2. staple (the town containing such market)

Alternative forms

• stapel, stapil, stapul

Descendants

• English: staple
• Scots: stapill, staple, steple

References

• “st?ple, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Etymology 2

Noun

staple (plural staples)

1. Alternative form of stapel

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