Is multiple more than several?
The attorneys representing the whistleblower who filed a complaint about President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine said they are representing “multiple whistleblowers” in connection to the case, including one with “first hand knowledge” of events.
“I can confirm that my firm and my team represent multiple whistleblowers in connection to the underlying August 12, 2019, disclosure to the Intelligence Community Inspector General,” attorney Andrew Bakaj tweeted Sunday. “No further comment at this time.”
Mark Zaid, another member of the first whistleblower’s legal team, also said the team is representing a second official with first-hand knowledge of events, as first reported by ABC News. The original whistleblower had not heard or seen a transcript of the phone call between Mr. Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the center of the August 12 complaint.
And so Republicans have been squawking “secondhand!” for days.
“I can confirm this report of a second #whistleblower being represented by our legal team,” Zaid tweeted. “They also made a protected disclosure under the law and cannot be retaliated against. This WBer has first hand knowledge.”
“Multiple” is more than two, I think, so there are two plus ???
Anyway, Trump’s skin is getting crisper by the minute.
I always understood ‘multiple’ to be an unspecified number larger than one, and ‘several’ to be more than two. Both words, of course, are often used because of their ambiguity, suggesting numbers higher than may be the case.
Hmm. Interesting. “Multiple” suggests “a lot” to me…but of course it’s only a suggestion, because it’s a deliberately vague word. Several, multiple, many – they’re all vague yet they have subtle differences of connotation. Words are tricky.
For me, “multiple” simply means “more than one”; “a couple” is 2-5; “a few” is 3-7; and the others are usually “more than a few”. But I agree that the ambiguity in this particular instance leads one to believe it’s more than two, both for people who want that to be true and for people who don’t want it to be true.
So we’ve got this “tricky” word usage colliding with Trumpspeak, in which “Very few people know” translates into “Here’s a piece of general knowledge known to almost everybody else on Earth that I just found out for myself,” and “A lot of people are saying ” actually means “Here’s a wild claim I just made up, moments ago.”
Seth, ‘couple’ is two, unless used in a sentence such as ‘I only had a couple of beers’ or ‘I’m running a couple of minutes late’.
AoS at 5 is correct, in which case a couple may mean anything from 2 to n+1.