count
EnglishEdit
PronunciationEdit
- (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA(key): /kaʊnt/
Audio (GA) (file) - Rhymes: -aʊnt
Etymology 1Edit
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.
VerbEdit
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.
- c. 1845–1846, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnets from the Portuguese”, in Poems. […], volume II, new edition, London: Chapman & Hall, […], published 1850, OCLC 3262114, 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 560103767, 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.
- 1886, John Addington Symonds, Sir Philip Sidney
- (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 […], part 1, 2nd edition, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, OCLC 932920499; 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, Shakespeare, William, 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]
SynonymsEdit
- (determine the number of objects in a group): enumerate, number; see also Thesaurus:count
Derived termsEdit
Terms derived from count (verb)
Related termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
to enumerate or determine number
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to be of significance; to matter
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NounEdit
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, The Faerie Qveene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, book V, canto X, stanza 16:
- When he was readie to his steede to mount / Vnto his way, which now was all his care and count.
Derived termsEdit
Terms derived from count (noun)
TranslationsEdit
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, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
AdjectiveEdit
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’.
ReferencesEdit
- ^ 1859, Alexander Mansfield, Law Dictionary
Etymology 2Edit
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 and comte.
NounEdit
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.
SynonymsEdit
Derived termsEdit
Related termsEdit
- (female form or wife): countess, contessa
- (adjectival form): comital
- (related titles): baron, don, duke, earl, lord, prince
TranslationsEdit
ruler of a county (male)
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AnagramsEdit
Middle EnglishEdit
NounEdit
count
- Alternative form of cunte