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Wednesday, 30 July 2014

100 Mistakes #12 - Couples, partners and pairs

In English, when you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, the two of you together are a 'couple' and each person is a 'partner'.

(In Spanish, when you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, the two of you together are a 'pareja' and each person is also a 'pareja'. Crazy!)

But we don't use the word 'partner' in this sense very often. It is usually only used when we want to refer to someone without referring to their gender. So for example, an end-of-year company party invitation might say:

"Partners welcome!"

Or perhaps, when your friend Samantha (a girl) doesn't feel like it's the right moment to announce that she has a girlfriend, she might say:

"I went to see the new Woody Allen film with my partner."

Usually, we just say 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend'. This doesn't tell us whether it's casual or serious, and it tells us nothing about the age of the people we're talking about.

'Partner' can also be used in the sense of co-owner in a business, or by organisations talking about working with other organisations:

"My business partner emptied the company bank account and flew to Buenos Aires."
"We look forward to working more closely with our partners in China."

'Couple' is also an informal way of saying 'two' or 'approximately two':

"I met up with Richie for a couple of beers."
"There were a couple of kids running around on the grass."

'Pair' is used to talk about objects that come in twos: a pair of shoes, a pair of socks, a pair of matching baseball caps. There are also a few individual objects that we conceptualize as pairs because they have two of something: a pair of glasses (2 lenses), a pair of scissors (2 blades), a pair of trousers (2 legs), a pair of pants (2 holes for legs).

'Pair' can also be used to mean two people, but not in the sense of 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend':

"For this activity, I'd like you to work in pairs."
"You look like a right pair of idiots in those matching baseball caps!"



A pear, on the other hand, is a type of fruit, similar to an apple. The pronunciation of 'pear' and 'pair' is the same, which can be exploited with hilarious consequences:

As I went a-walking down Winchester Street,
I saw an old man with no shoes on his feet,
And as I had plenty of money to spare,
I went into a fruit shop and bought him a pear.





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