I have a tendency to dislike ambiguity, which is a problem because English is full of it. I was reminded today of a theory I developed when I was young. I think I was only about 10 when I conceived this, but it has stood the test of time. The impetus for this theory, I believe, was the sharing of candy. Some grubby handed youth would ask “Can I have some?” and then undoubtedly be unsatisfied with the “some” that I shared. Therefore, the following translation table was created:

Word Quantity
Couple 2
Few 3
Some 4
Brunch 5

A couple is obviously two, for the definition is quite clear, the other values are derived by the numbers of letters in the word, which I noticed as an increasing pattern as words of greater length were used for quantity. When poled independently, several people confirmed the order of these words above, if not the specific quantity mapping.

It seems like a small thing, but these sorts of things are quite valuable. In fact, Bacon (Francis, not Kevin) referred to such barriers to communication as the “Idols of the Marketplace”. After all, didn’t your mother tell you not to worship false idols? Eh? Eh? Also, I suspect this personal quirk of mine might be why I dislike acronyms so much, at least colloquial acronyms (VI = “Village Inn”, knock it off Devon)