under the counter
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.53 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adv
Illicitly, against regulations, of goods kept under the serving counter in a shop to be unobtrusively passed to a customer who knows they are available for surreptitious sale (e.g. pornographic magazines in a newsagent).
adj
In an underhand way, sneakily; unofficially, particularly with regard to payment or tax avoidance.
British usage; Colloquial
Example Sentences
- "1969 The Seven Minutes: A Novel - Page 157 by Irving Wallace Oh, yeah, I remember, you mean about me not trying to sell from under the counter?"
- "2004, James Carlos Blake, Under the Skin, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 55, When Prohibition became the law, they produced the stuff in greater quantity and sold it under the counter to anybody who wanted it."
- "Sanguette used to be widely available in France, specifically in what was Occitania, i.e. roughly the southernmost third of the country. Today, because stringent laws govern the slaughter of animals, it is only to be found under the counter in country markets."
- "This morning he said he could not remember exactly where or how the invoice was written. It was used to cover up an under the counter payment from the sale of his land in Lucan."
Usage
- British usage
- Colloquial
Inflected Forms
more under the counter (comparative)
most under the counter (superlative)
under-the-counter (alternative)