Etymograph

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’.

  1. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEputō1‘to reckon’
  2. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEcomputō1‘to calculate, compute’
  3. Old Frenchc. 842–1400conter1‘to add up; to tell a story’
  4. Anglo-Normanc. 1066–1400conter1
  5. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500counten1‘to count’
  6. Englishearliest quotation c. 1587–1588count1

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, English count
  2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: c. 1587–1588, Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […]: “The entertainment we haue had of him, Is far…”.

Lineage

  1. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEputōWiktionary, English count‘to reckon’
  2. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEcomputōWiktionary, English count‘to calculate, compute’
  3. Old Frenchc. 842–1400conterWiktionary, English count‘to add up; to tell a story’
  4. Anglo-Normanc. 1066–1400conterWiktionary, English count
  5. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500countenWiktionary, English count‘to count’
  6. Englishearliest quotation c. 1587–1588countWiktionary, English count. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 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.

Full etymology on Wiktionary

Linked words

through Latin putus

puta, 12 more

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’

computation, compute, raconteur, 4 more

Another origin of count

  1. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEcomes‘companion’
  2. Anglo-Normanc. 1066–1400conte
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500counte
  4. 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.

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “count”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Latin putō / count

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