Word.ws English Dictionary

under-the-counter

under-the-counter adjective: illicit, obtained or sold furtively.

Adjective

under-the-counter

  1. Illicit, obtained or sold furtively.
    • The village shop seemed to be a bastion of respectability but those in the know could obtain some very questionable under-the-counter material.
    • The frequency of under-the-counter selling is most difficult to ascertain.1962, United States Congressional Serial Set, United States Government Printing Office

Questions about under-the-counter

What does under-the-counter mean?
Under-the-counter means illicit, obtained or sold furtively.
What part of speech is under-the-counter?
Under-the-counter is an adjective.

Words near under-the-counter in the dictionary

  1. under-standers
  2. under-steward
  3. under-stewards
  4. under-tenant
  5. under-tenants
  6. under-the-counter
  7. under-the-table
  8. under-time
  9. under-timed
  10. under-times
  11. under-timing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: under-the-counter (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “under-the-counter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/under-the-counter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.