count

English

Pronunciation

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)

  1. (intransitive) To recite numbers in sequence.
    Can you count to a hundred?
    The psychiatrist asked her to count down from a hundred by sevens.
  2. (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.
  3. (intransitive) To amount to, to number in total.
  4. (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.
  5. (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.
  6. (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.
  7. (transitive) To reckon in, to include in consideration.
    They walked for three days, not counting the time spent resting.
  8. (intransitive, obsolete) To take account or note (of), to care (for).
  9. (transitive, obsolete) To recount, to tell.
  10. (intransitive, UK, law, obsolete) To plead orally; to argue a matter in court; to recite a count.[1]
Conjugation
Conjugation of count
infinitive (to) count
present tense past tense
1st-person singular count counted
2nd-person singular count, countest† counted, countedst†
3rd-person singular counts, counteth† counted
plural count
subjunctive count counted
imperative count —
participles counting counted

†Archaic or obsolete.

Synonyms
Derived terms
Terms derived from count (verb)
Translations

Noun

count (plural counts)

  1. The act of counting or tallying a quantity.
    Give the chairs a quick count to check if we have enough.
  2. 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.
  3. A countdown.
  4. (law) A charge of misconduct brought in a legal proceeding.
  5. (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.
  6. (obsolete) An object of interest or account; value; estimation.
  7. (euphemistic, slang) Cunt (the taboo swear word) #:
    That count deserves a punishment.
Derived terms
Terms derived from count (noun)
Translations
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)

  1. (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’.
  2. (shipping, marketing) Used to show the amount of like items in a package.

References
  1. Alexander M[ansfield] Burrill (1850–1851) “COUNT”, in A New Law Dictionary and Glossary: […], volumes (please specify |part= or |volume=I or II), New York, N.Y.: John S. Voorhies, […], →OCLC.

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)

  1. The male ruler of a county.
  2. A nobleman holding a rank intermediate between dukes and barons.
  3. (entomology) Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Tanaecia. Other butterflies in this genus are called earls and viscounts.
Hyponyms
  • comte (“French count”)
  • conte (“Italian count”)
  • earl (“English count”)
  • graaf (“Dutch count”)
  • graf (“German count”)
Derived terms
Translations
See also

Anagrams

Middle English

Noun

count

  1. Alternative form of cunte
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