A Couple more Words about Couple

Further to yesterday's post, my German teacher points out that in German, the word for "pair", Paar, is also used to mean both exactly two and an unspecified small number. But because German capitalizes its nouns, it has a nifty solution for distinguishing between the two: ein Paar is two, and ein paar is a few. Not, of course, that this helps in speech, so a German hankering for jellybeans would be no further ahead with me than an English speaker. And, although the English Language did use to capitalize all Nouns, I don't think we English Speakers and Jellybean Eaters are likely to revive this Practice. Some American usages originating in the 19th century were in fact influenced by German, so it is entirely possible that the use of "couple" to mean "a few" can be attributed to this too.