Surprising people think this then always say “you are a cute couple” or “you make a good married couple.”
“I only had a couple of beers, officer.”
“Hey, can I borrow a couple bucks?”
That's a distinct meaning from "couple" as in "couple of apples", where it really does just mean "two".
(1) A small number of things (roughly 2)
(2) Two people in some sort of relationship
(3) to join or connect (two) things together
Even though each is obviously derived from the fact that two things are involved, that wouldn't even cross the mind of a native speaker hearing the word in different contexts and assuming the right meaning.
https://www.amazon.com/Coupling-Garden-Fitting-Adaptor-Conne...
People like playing with language, and use understatement regularly. Unlike “I’ll just have two beers”, where it’s obvious to any child who has learned to count that this is the case, when kids regularly see people around them say “I’ll just have a couple of beers”, they assume couple is another word for an indeterminate small amount like few. When they later learn of other uses of “couple” they assume these are unrelated.
Sometimes one may want to be accurate but not really need to be precise. Sometimes one needs to be both accurate and precise. One should never be precise and inaccurate (e.g pi=8.739216503).
But sometimes people need to be vague and ambiguous (e.g diplomacy) and sometimes one can be ambiguous with another who knows exactly what he means.
Sometimes the gap is easier filled with non-verbals. If a waiter asks me if I'd like fresh ground pepper on my salad he doesn't ask if I want one twist, a couple of twist, few twist, or several twist. He starts grinding the pepper over my salad and says "Say when".
On the other hand, my wife has no need to ask. She knows I mean sex. (You didn't see that coming. I jest, but a couple has several ways of saying sex without saying it, some fewer than others.)