couple of

a couple of (people or things)

Two or more people or things. The phrase is intentionally vague in number. It's not going to be a big party—I just invited over a couple of people from school. I just need a couple of minutes to talk to you about your upcoming schedule, sir.
See also: couple, of
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

couple of

two; two or three; a few; some; not many. Bill grabbed a couple of beers from the refrigerator. I hung a couple of pictures on the wall.
See also: couple, of
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • a couple of (people or things)
  • couple
  • big and bold
  • force of numbers
  • come from far and wide
  • along the beaten track
  • beaten
  • (there are) too many chiefs and not enough Indians
  • chief
  • as alike as two peas in a pod
References in classic literature
I am so hungry, and it will go badly with me in the future, for I see here not an apple or pear or fruit of any kind--nothing but vegetables everywhere.' At last he thought, 'At a pinch I can eat a salad; it does not taste particularly nice, but it will refresh me.' So he looked about for a good head and ate it, but no sooner had he swallowed a couple of mouthfuls than he felt very strange, and found himself wonderfully changed.
When he had wandered about for a couple of days he found it quite easily.
Weller stepped slowly to the door, as if he expected something more; slowly opened it, slowly stepped out, and had slowly closed it within a couple of inches, when Mr.
A couple of candles were burning in the little front parlour, and a couple of caps were reflected on the window-blind.
Here I found some young onions, a couple of gladiolus bulbs, and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which I secured, and, scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through scarlet and crimson trees towards Kew-- it was like walking through an avenue of gigantic blood drops--possessed with two ideas: to get more food, and to limp, as soon and as far as my strength permitted, out of this accursed unearthly region of the pit.
I hunted for food among the trees, finding nothing, and I also raided a couple of silent houses, but they had already been broken into and ransacked.
He said it was a sight better than lying tied a couple of years every day, and trembling all over every time there was a sound.
There was a big steamboat lay- ing at the shore away up under the point, about three mile above the town -- been there a couple of hours, taking on freight.
What we was after was a couple of noble big di'monds as big as hazel-nuts, which everybody was running to see.
"If you'd lived in New York a couple of years, even a couple of months, you wouldn't talk like that.
Not seldom Philip, knowing all the time how stupid he was, would force a quarrel, and they would not speak to one another for a couple of days.
(I had been there a couple of times before), I thought, naturally, of the drinks that would precede those meals.
"We can get a couple of dances in before we eat," Mary proposed.
I should be sorry if my conscience, insisting on a rigid attention to the matter in hand, forced me to dismiss him in a couple of lines.
I think there is nothing more pathetic than to see one of these poor old childless couples taking a menagerie of yelping little worthless dogs to their hearts; and then adding some cursing and squawking parrots and a jackass-voiced macaw; and next a couple of hundred screeching songbirds, and presently some fetid guinea pigs and rabbits, and a howling colony of cats.