Say it like this
- We have too much coupling between these services.
- The goal is to reduce coupling and increase cohesion.
- Tight coupling makes refactoring painful.
Use it at work
Code review
- This creates tight coupling between billing and auth.
- Let's reduce coupling with an interface.
Design
- Loose coupling lets each team deploy alone.
- The services are too coupled to release separately.
Explaining a problem
- Every change breaks something else because of coupling.
- High coupling makes testing hard.
Don't say this
Coupling is not a verb meaning to connect; it is a noun describing the level of dependency.
Don't mix it up
| Term | What it is | Who writes or uses it | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| coupling | How much parts depend on each other | Engineers | Design reviews |
| cohesion | How well one part sticks to one job | Engineers | Design reviews |
Practice
Try it
4 quick exercises
1. The frontend and backend have high _______, so changes in one often break the other.
2. Which sentence uses coupling incorrectly?
3. Your senior engineer says the code has too many dependencies. How do you express this technically?
4. Rewrite in technical English: We changed one thing and five other things broke because everything is stuck together.
Say it out loud
Phrase 1 of 3
"We have too much coupling between these services."
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More about coupling
Real examples(3)
- in a code review
"This database query is tightly coupled to the business logic. We should move it to a separate layer."
- in an architecture meeting
"The main issue with our monolith is high coupling between the payment and inventory modules."
- in a standup
"We refactored the API to reduce coupling, so now the mobile team can work independently."
More mistakes(2)
Handle with care. Coupling is an architectural concept; do not confuse it with simply connecting two things together or romantic pairing. It refers specifically to code dependency.
- ✕The coupling is working well now.✓We have achieved low coupling, which is working well.
Coupling itself does not work or not work. You assess whether the level of coupling is good or bad.
- ✕Let us add more coupling to make it faster.✓Let's reduce coupling to improve maintainability.
More coupling typically makes code harder to maintain and test, not faster.
Other forms(2)
- coupling noun
"High coupling in this codebase is slowing us down."
- coupled adjective
"These components are tightly coupled and difficult to test independently."
Often used with(5)
- tight coupling · Used when modules are heavily dependent on each other; usually considered a problem.
- loose coupling · Used when modules have minimal dependencies; generally a design goal.
- reduce coupling · The common action phrase meaning to minimize dependencies between modules.
- high coupling · Describes significant interdependency between components.
- low coupling · Describes minimal interdependency; promotes modularity and testability.
Similar words(3)
- interdependency · More general term; coupling is the technical term preferred in software architecture.
- dependency · Narrower term referring to what one module depends on; coupling describes the strength of that relationship.
- interconnectedness · Broader term; coupling is more specific to code architecture.
Opposites(3)
- decoupling
- independence
- modularity
Questions(4)
- What does coupling mean in software engineering?
- Coupling measures how much one software module or component depends on another. High coupling means modules are tightly connected and interdependent. Low coupling means they are independent with minimal connections. In software design, teams aim for low coupling because it makes code easier to test, maintain, and modify.
- How do you use coupling in a sentence at work?
- You typically use it with adjectives like tight, loose, high, or low. For example: We need to reduce coupling between the authentication and payment modules. Or: This service has tight coupling to the database, making it hard to scale.
- Is coupling a formal or informal term?
- Coupling is a formal technical term used in software architecture and engineering. It is standard terminology in code reviews, architecture discussions, and technical documentation. While not slang, it is professional and expected vocabulary in tech companies.
- What is the opposite of coupling?
- The opposite concepts are decoupling, modularity, and independence. Decoupling is the process of reducing coupling. A well-designed system has low coupling and high cohesion.
