Word.ws English Dictionary

under the counter

under the counter adverb: 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).

Adverb

under the counter (comparative more under the counter, superlative most under the counter)

  1. 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).
    • Oh, yeah, I remember, you mean about me not trying to sell from under the counter?1969 The Seven Minutes: A Novel - Page 157 by Irving Wallace
    • When Prohibition became the law, they produced the stuff in greater quantity and sold it under the counter to anybody who wanted it.2004, James Carlos Blake, Under the Skin, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 55

Adjective

under the counter (comparative more under the counter, superlative most under the counter)

  1. (Ireland, UK, colloquial) In an underhand way, sneakily; unofficially, particularly with regard to payment or tax avoidance.
    • 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.2003 September 19, “Lawlor questioned at Planning probe”, in RTE News

under the counter meaning in Urdu and Kannada

under the counter in Urdu

بےایمانی سے بیچنا, بلارسید خریدنا, بیچنا, خلاف قانون, خفیہ

under the counter in Kannada

ನ್ಯಾಯಬಾಹಿರವಾಗಿ

Forms of under the counter

Adverb
comparativemore under the counter
superlativemost under the counter
alternative formunder-the-counter
Adjective
comparativemore under the counter
superlativemost under the counter

Questions about under the counter

What does under the counter mean?
Under the counter means 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).
What is under the counter in Urdu?
Under the counter in Urdu is بےایمانی سے بیچنا, بلارسید خریدنا, بیچنا. See Under the counter meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is under the counter?
Under the counter can be an adverb or an adjective.

Words near under the counter in the dictionary

  1. under the auspices of
  2. under the bootheel of
  3. under the breath
  4. under the carpet
  5. under the cosh
  6. under the counter
  7. under the covers
  8. under the fist of
  9. under the gun
  10. under the hammer
  11. under the hood

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: under the counter (page history and authors); under the counter (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); under the counter (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.