English
count
Count comes from Old French conter ‘to add up; to tell a story’, from Latin computō ‘to calculate’, and ultimately from Latin putō ‘to reckon’.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEputō‘to reckon’
- Latin, derivedc. 75 BCE–200 CEcomputō‘to calculate, compute’
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400conter‘to add up; to tell a story’
- Anglo-Normanc. 1066–1400same form
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500counten‘to count’
- Englishearliest quotation c. 1587–1588count
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEputō‘to reckon’
- Latin, derivedc. 75 BCE–200 CEcomputō‘to calculate, compute’
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400conter‘to add up; to tell a story’
- Anglo-Normanc. 1066–1400same form
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500counten‘to count’
- Englishearliest quotation c. 1587–1588count
Earliest quotation: c. 1587–1588, Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […]: “The entertainment we haue had of him, Is far…”
The story
In this sense, displaced native Old English tellan, whence Modern English tell.
Linked words
through Latin putus
through Latin putō ‘to clean, cleanse’
dispute, imp, amputation, putative, indisputable, amputee, repute, indisputably, amputate, imputation, depute, disputation, disputable, 11 more
through Latin computō ‘to compute’
Another origin of count
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEcomes‘companion’
- Anglo-Normanc. 1066–1400conte
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500counte
- Englishtodaycount
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".
Today it means
verb To recite numbers in sequence.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Latin putō / count