Emily Dickinson Lexicon

COUNT'ER, n. [from count.]

1. A false piece of money or stamped metal, used as means of reckoning; any thing used to keep an account or reckoning, as in games.
2. Money, in contempt. – Shak.
3. A table or board on which money is counted; a table on which goods in a shop are laid for examination by purchasers. In lieu of this, we sometimes see written the French comptoir, from compter, computo; but counter is the genuine orthography.
4. The name of certain prisons in London.
5. One that counts or reckons; also, an auditor.
6. Encounter. [Not used.]
7. In ships, an arch or vault, whose upper part is terminated by the bottom of the stern. The upper or second counter is above the former, but not vaulted.
8. A tell-tale; a contrivance in an engine or carriage to tell numbers, as of strokes or revolutions.
9. In music, counter is the name given to an under part, to serve for contrast to a principal part, as counter-tenor, &c. Counter of a horse, that part of a horse's forehand which lies between the shoulder and under the neck. – Farrier's Dict.