Several means more than two or three but not very many. When your teacher asks for several volunteers to help clean up after an art project, she probably wants four, five, or six students, not just two and not the whole class. When a recipe calls for several cloves of garlic, you might use four or five.

The word sits in that useful middle ground between “a few” and “many.” If your mom says you can invite several friends to your birthday party, you're looking at maybe four to seven friends: more than one or two, but fewer than a large group like fifteen. When a weather forecaster says several inches of snow will fall, expect more than a light dusting but less than a major blizzard.

Several can also mean separate or distinct, though this usage is less common. When a group project gets divided into its several parts, each part stands alone even though they belong to the same whole.

People sometimes confuse several with a couple, but they're different. A couple means two, while several always means more. If you tell your friend you'll be there in a couple of minutes, you mean two or three minutes. If you say several minutes, you're talking about at least four or five, maybe more.