[f. COUNT v.] A building or apartment appropriated to the keeping of accounts; a private chamber, closet or cabinet appropriated to business and correspondence; an office. Now only as in c.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 99. Cowntinge hows, computoria.
1577. trans. Bullinger’s Decades (1592), 286. These kind of fellowes … keep themselues close in secret counting houses, their baggs are their pillowes whereon they sleep.
1587. Wills & Inv. N. C. (Surtees), 157. In the lyttell cownting howsse within the great chamber.
1734. Watts, Reliq. Juv. (1789), 97. Closets and compting-houses often told our ancestors their duty.
Nursery Rhyme. The king was in his counting house, Counting out his money.
† b. The office of account of the royal household. Obs.
a. 1483. Liber Niger, in Househ. Ord., 83. He indenteth with the Thesaurer of the household in the countinghouse for all the basyns, ewears, cuppes, [etc.]. Ibid. (1539), 228. The Lord Great Master, the Treasurer and Comptroller of the Kings Household … shall be dayly in the Compting-house between the hours of 8 and 9 in the morning.
1670. Blount, Law Dict., Counting-House of the Kings Houshold … Commonly called the Green Cloth … where sit the Lord Steward … the Comptroller … for daily taking the Accompts of all Expenses of the Houshold.
c. spec. A building, room, or office in a commercial establishment, in which the book-keeping, correspondence, etc., are carried on; also attrib. (Now largely superseded in everyday use by office.)
1614. G. Markham, Way to Wealth, in Arb., Garner, IV. 334. The counting-houses of the Fish Brokers.
a. 1633. Lennard, trans. Charron’s Wisd., I. xxxix. § 10. To hear … a Merchant talking in his counting-house.
1777. Burke, Let. Sheriffs of Bristol, Wks. III. 148. The merchant who sits in his compting-house.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., IV. 134. There were those who still remembered him an apprentice, sweeping one of the counting houses of the City.
attrib. 1882. Pebody, Eng. Journalism, x. 75. A year or two of counting-house work disgusted James Perry with invoices and ledgers.
† d. An office of finance, a COMPTOIR. Obs.
1735. Berkeley, App. to Querist, § 234, Wks. (1871), III. 514. Whether it may not be expedient to appoint four counting-houses, one in each province, for converting notes into specie?
