countant, accountant; liable to be called upon to give account. Heywood, Rape of Lucrece, i. 1 (Tarquin).
countenance, bearing, demeanour, behaviour; authority, favour, credit; show of politeness. As You Like It, i. 1. 19; Tam. Shrew, i. 1. 234; 1 Hen. IV, i. 2. 33; Udall, Roister Doister, iii. 3 (end). The senses are variable and elusive.
counter, an encounter. Spenser, Tears of the Muses, 207.
counter, a counter-tenor voice. Witch of Edmonton, ii. 1 (3 Clown). See the context.
counter, compter, a prison, chiefly for debtors, attached to a city court; ‘One o’ your city pounds, the counters’, B. Jonson, Every Man, ii. 1 (Downright). The sheriffs of London had each his compter; one was in the Poultry, the other in Wood Street, Cheapside. There were three degrees of rooms for the prisoners: those on the Master’s side (the best), the Twopenny Ward, and the Hole (for the poorest), Middleton, Roaring Girl, iii. 3 (Sir Alexander). Those in the Hole were fed from ‘the basket’; see [basket]. Note that, according to Gascoigne, there were three Counters, the third being in Bread Street. ‘In Woodstreat, Bredstreat, and in Pultery’, Steel Glas, 791. In Stow’s Survey of London ‘the Compter in the Poultrie’ is mentioned (ed. Thoms, p. 99), and ‘the Compter in Bread Street’ (ib., p. 131).
counterfeit, a likeness, portrait, Merch. Ven. iii. 2. 115; Timon, v. 1. 83. Phr. a pair of counterfeits, used in the sense of vamps, or fore-parts of the upper leather of a shoe, Dekker, Shoemakers’ Holiday, iv. 2 (Firk).
counterfesaunce, counterfeiting, dissimulation. Spencer, F. Q. i. 8. 49; iv. 4. 27. OF. contrefaisance, counterfeiting (Godefroy).
countermure, to wall round, to fence in. Kyd, Span. Tragedy, iii. 7. 16. F. contremurer, Ital. ‘contramurare, to countermure’ (Florio).
counterpoint, a counterpane for a bed. Tam. Shrew, ii. 1. 353. F. ‘contrepoinct, a quilt, counterpoint’ (Cotgr.). See Dict. (s.v. Counterpane).
counterscarf, a ‘counterscarp’, or outer wall or slope of the ditch, which supports the covered way of a fort. Heywood, Four Prentises (Godfrey); vol. ii, p. 242; id. London’s Mirror, fourth Show. F. contrescarpe (Rabelais), Ital. contrascarpa; see Estienne, Préc. 351; scarpa, slope of a wall.