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Glite Dictionary
countinghouse

countinghouse

1 9.9
A room in a business where people keep money records, often in the past
  • noun
  • /ˈkaʊntɪŋˌhaʊs/
  • Archaic
: casa de contabilidad
  • In the old village, the only place to handle financial matters was the countinghouse on Main Street.

Examples

  • The king was in his countinghouse.

    Bloom (2003)

  • Mark me, in life, my spirit never walked beyond our countinghouse, never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole.

    A Christmas Carol (2009)

  • More than one of this type of object displaces the situation out of the realm of quality into the blunt countinghouse of quantity.

    Academic text (2014)

  • The merchant kept meticulous records in his countinghouse to track all transactions.

  • During the bustling market days, the countinghouse was filled with clerks calculating profits and losses.

Surface Forms

countinghouse singular
countinghouses plural

Morphology

countinghouse = counting + house (transparent) = counting + house

The compound is directly built from 'counting' (the act of keeping numerical/accounts) + 'house' meaning a building/office, so the meaning is predictable from its parts.

Etymology

The word countinghouse is easy to remember: it joins counting ('to add or record numbers') and house ('building'). Merchants long ago kept ledgers and money in a special 'house' for counting, so a countinghouse was the office where business accounts were kept.