count
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: kount, IPA(key): /kaʊnt/
Audio (General American): (file) - Rhymes: -aʊnt
Etymology 1
From Middle English counten, borrowed from Anglo-Norman conter, from Old French conter (“add up; tell a story”), from Latin computō (“I compute”). In this sense, displaced native Old English tellan, whence Modern English tell. Doublet of compute.
Verb
count (third-person singular simple present counts, present participle counting, simple past and past participle counted)
- (intransitive) To recite numbers in sequence.
- Can you count to a hundred?The psychiatrist asked her to count down from a hundred by sevens.
- (transitive) To determine the number of (objects in a group).
- Count the number of apples in the bag and write down the number on the spreadsheet.
- 1803, Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution:
- The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;
The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, […]
- c. 1845–1846, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnets from the Portuguese”, in Poems. […], new edition, volume II, London: Chapman & Hall, […], published 1850, →OCLC, sonnet XLII, page 479:
- How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
- (intransitive) To amount to, to number in total.
- 1819 July 15, [Lord Byron], Don Juan, London: […] Thomas Davison, […], →OCLC, canto II, stanza LXIII, page 150:
- They counted thirty, crowded in a space
Which left scarce room for motion or exertion; […]
- (intransitive) To be of significance; to matter.
- Your views don’t count here. It does count if you cheat with someone when you’re drunk.
- (intransitive) To be an example of something: often followed by as and an indefinite noun.
- 1886, John Addington Symonds, Sir Philip Sidney:
- This excellent man […] counted among the best and wisest of English statesmen.
- 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
- Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. […] But as a foundation for analysis it is highly subjective: it rests on difficult decisions about what counts as a territory, what counts as output and how to value it. Indeed, economists are still tweaking it.
- Apples count as a type of fruit.
- (transitive) To consider something as an example of something or as having some quality; to account, to regard as.
- He counts himself a hero after saving the cat from the river. I count you as more than a friend.
- c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene ii:
- The entertainment we haue had of him,
Is far from villanie or ſeruitude,
And might in noble mindes be counted princely.
- (transitive) To reckon in, to include in consideration.
- They walked for three days, not counting the time spent resting.
- (intransitive, obsolete) To take account or note (of), to care (for).
- c. 1589–1593, William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, line 37:
- No man counts of her beauty.
- (transitive, obsolete) To recount, to tell.
- (intransitive, UK, law, obsolete) To plead orally; to argue a matter in court; to recite a count.[1]
Conjugation
Synonyms
- (determine the number of objects in a group): enumerate, number; see also Thesaurus:count
Derived terms
Terms derived from count (verb)
- almost doesn't count
- almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades
- be able to count on one's fingers
- black where it counts
- box-counting dimension
- but who's counting
- close only counts in horseshoes
- close only counts in horseshoes and darts
- close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades
- count against
- count angels on pinheads
- count calories
- count cards
- count chickens
- count coup
- count down
- count-down
- count 'em
- count in
- count noses
- count-off
- count off
- count on
- count one's blessings
- count one's chickens
- count one's lucky stars
- count on one hand
- count on the fingers of one hand
- count out
- count sheep
- count the hours
- count to 10
- count to ten
- count towards
- count-up
- count up
- count upon
- don't count your chickens before the eggs have hatched
- don't count your chickens before they're hatched
- double count
- double-count
- forecount
- it's the thought that counts
- it's what's inside that counts
- let me count the ways
- let us count the ways
- make it count
- stand up and be counted
- where it counts
Related terms
Translations
to enumerate or determine number
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to be of significance; to matter
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Noun
count (plural counts)
- The act of counting or tallying a quantity.
- Give the chairs a quick count to check if we have enough.
- The result of a tally that reveals the number of items in a set; a quantity counted.
- 2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Picador, →ISBN, page 177:
- By the official count, there are something like thirteen hundred species of birds in the Amazon, but Cohn-Haft thinks there are actually a good many more, because people have relied too much on features like size and plumage and not paid enough attention to sound.
- A countdown.
- (law) A charge of misconduct brought in a legal proceeding.
- (baseball) The number of balls and strikes, respectively, on a batter's in-progress plate appearance.
- He has a 3–2 count with the bases loaded.
- (obsolete) An object of interest or account; value; estimation.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 16:
- When he was readie to his steede to mount / Vnto his way, which now was all his care and count.
- (euphemistic, slang) Cunt (the taboo swear word)
- That count deserves a punishment.
Derived terms
Terms derived from count (noun)
- ahead in the count
- behind in the count
- bit-count integrity
- blood count
- body count
- Borda count
- cell count
- complete blood count
- count circle
- countless
- count noun
- day count convention
- down for the count
- fastball count
- full count
- hard count
- headcount
- head count
- hitter's count
- king-count
- least count
- lose count
- no-count
- non-count
- notch count
- on all counts
- on the count of
- out for the count
- pitch count
- pitcher's count
- plate count
- pollen count
- post count
- read count
- soft count
- sperm count
- take the count
- thread count
- winter count
- word count
Translations
the act of counting
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the result of a tally that reveals the number of items in a set
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a countdown
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a charge of misconduct
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Adjective
count (not comparable)
- (linguistics, grammar) Countable.
- 2014, James Lambert, “Diachronic stability in Indian English lexis”, in World Englishes, page 118:
- For example, the term abuse would require at least one definition for the uncount usage ‘invective, insulting language’, and another for the count usage ‘an item of invective, an insult’.
- (shipping, marketing) Used to show the amount of like items in a package.
References
Etymology 2
From Middle English counte, from Anglo-Norman conte and Old French comte (“count”), from Latin comes (“companion”) (more specifically derived from its accusative form comitem) in the sense of "noble fighting alongside the king". Doublet of comes, comte, and conte.
Noun
count (plural counts)
- The male ruler of a county.
- A nobleman holding a rank intermediate between dukes and barons.
- (entomology) Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Tanaecia. Other butterflies in this genus are called earls and viscounts.
Hyponyms
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
ruler of a county (male)
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