Counter

[Dr. Goodword]

• counter •

Pronunciation: kæwn-têr • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. The flat surface of a long piece of furniture over which sales transactions or food preparation take place. 2. Someone or something that keeps count. 3. A marker in games requiring markers.

Notes: Did you ever wonder what counters are supposed to count? I do all the time; it's one of my favorite ways of consuming the vacant moment. This English word is a lexical orphan.

In Play: We have two idiomatic phrases built around this word 'over the counter' meaning "without a prescription" and "legitimate" and 'under the counter', meaning "illegitimate". The former is often abbreviated OTC. Lunch counters, long counters with stools, were commonplace in the previous century: "The civil rights demonstrations of the 60s began with lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina." So counters played a major role in American history.

Word History: Today's Good Word was snatched from Anglo-Norman conter when it wasn't looking. Anglo-Norman got it from Old French conter "to add up, tell a story", inherited from Latin computare "to count, calculate, compute". The Latin word is made up of com- "(together) with" + putare, originally meaning "to prune, trim" but later "to reckon", from PIE pau- "to strike", source also of Latin pavire "to beat (down), trample", Greek paiein "to strike", and Lithuanian pjauti "to cut" and pjuklas "saw". (Now for a note of gratitude for Diane McGuire for sharing with us today's phonologically and semantically squiggly Good Word.)

[George Kovac]

“Counter” is one of those delicious (squiggly?) English words that takes off in so many different directions that many dictionaries divide it in to multiple entries. How the word accreted such diverse meanings could fill pages of etymological discourse. Hey, you think the first offer you got when you put your house on the market was too low? Then tell your broker to counter at a higher price.

The cleverest use of “counter” that I ever encountered was the corporate name of a kitchen remodeling contractor. The business called itself “Counter Intelligence.”

[Slava]

Then tell your broker to counter at a higher price.

If I understand correctly, this counter is from a different root. It's related to contra.

I like the remodeling business's whimsy. I remember the pest and rodent control business I saw that called itself "The Last Supper".