What is the upper bound on "several"?

In this answer on Stack Overflow, the term "several" is used as an indeterminate number, the actual value of which is literally in the quintillions:

Zero is one of several values that can be represented exactly.

To my ear, this is an exceedingly strange use of "several", which led me to believe that the writer was confused.

I realize that trying to truly pin down "several" is probably a hopeless task, but I'm curious if anyone else would use it for such an immensely vast quantity, and if there's regional variation in the usage.

So: How many is "several"? Would anyone else use "several" for "quintillions"?

This question addresses similar issues, but doesn't seem to have the answer I'm interested in (much of the discussion mentions lower bounds for "several", but not upper bounds).

Solution 1:

As I posted in a comment, one of the definitions of several is:

more than two but fewer than many

A further search for a definition of many yields:

Being one of a large indefinite number; numerous

In my own experience in American English, I wouldn't use "several" to mean "quintillions". Many would fit the context better.

Solution 2:

I consider several to be workable as a comparison between sizes of numbers. If I say, "Several of the planets in the solar system are larger than Earth" it would make sense that somewhere around 3 or 4 planets would qualify.

If I were to say, "Several of the planets in our galaxy are larger than Earth" I would think it fair to consider the number referenced by this several to be larger than the one comparing planets in only our solar system.

This isn't a hard and fast rule that can be applied by a strict measurement — which is exactly why the word several is being used in the first place. The point is to convey the idea of an amount that is akin to "a few" or "some but not most."

So to directly answer your question: No, there is no upper-bound on the amount conveyed by several. More specifically, the upper-bound on several grows as the container one level up grows.

Solution 3:

Thank you for providing a link the original Stackoverflow question. I think that there is a mathematical aspect to the answer that should be examined. There is also a numerical methods aspects that needs to be considered (that is, how computers represent numbers).

If the question were "how many numbers may be represented exactly using a floating point representation," then the answer would be similar to your (2^64 - 2^53), or something like 1.843 x 10^19. Yes, Big number. I agree, too big for "several."

However, the context of the original question is using cosine. While the range of cosine can be [-infinity, infinity], the domain can only be [-1.0, 1.0]. As you probably know, cosine is only different from [0, 2*pi] and then starts to repeat itself.

So what if we framed the question as these two questions:

How many floating point numbers may be represented between 0 and 2*pi?
And how many cosines of those floating point numbers may be represented exactly by a floating point number?

A detailed analysis of this question would probably need to be migrated back to Stackoverflow. I am going to hazard a guess that there are only 5. (Can you think of any cosine values other than 0, .5, 1.0, -.5, and -1.0 that may be exactly represented in floating point? Those correspond to pi/2, pi/3, 0, 2*pi/3, and pi. I may be wrong about only 5 numbers for cosine that may be exactly represented, so the question is not rhetorical.)

The remaining cosines are probably irrational and do not have an exact FP representation.

If the original trigonometry answer meant "zero is one of 5 values that can be represented exactly," then I think the answerer used several correctly. If the actual number is 42, then several is less right. But we are not talking about a quintillion of numbers. The range and the domain are too restricted.

Solution 4:

This is purely subjective, but in terms of differentiating many and several, I would restrict myself to using 'several' when it represents a countable number, whereas many just means a large number.

Solution 5:

Building up this answer, several implies an indeterminate countable value from 3 to 11, inclusively.

• If the value is 1, then a would be sufficient.
• If the value is 2 then the word a couple is appropriate to represent the value, notably verbally.
• If the value is 12 then a dozen would be appropriate.
• If the value is between 12..23 inclusively, then a dozen or so would apply.
• If the value is 24 then it would be two dozens.
• The next upper-bound would be 144, or a dozen dozen, in which beyond this, simply many would be the catch-all word to use.