COUNT, v.t.

1. Reckoning; the act of numbering; as, this is the number according to my count.
2. Number. – Spenser.
3. In law, a particular charge in an indictment, or narration in pleading, setting, forth the cause of complaint. There may be different counts in the same declaration.

A title of foreign nobility, equivalent to the English earl, and whose domain is a county. An earl; the alderman of a shire, as the Saxons called him. The titles of English nobility, according to their rank, are Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, and Baron. – Blackstone. Encyc.

To count on or upon, to reckon upon; to found an account or scheme on; to rely on. We can not count on the friendship of nations. Count not on the sincerity of sycophants.

1. To number; to tell or name one by one, or by small numbers, for ascertaining the whole number of units in a collection; as, to count the years, days and hours of a man's life; to count the stars. Who can count the dust of Jacob? – Numb. xxiii.
2. To reckon; to preserve a reckoning; to compute. Some tribes of rude nations count their years by the coming of certain birds among them at certain seasons, and leaving them at others. – Locke.
3. To reckon; to place to an account; to ascribe or impute; to consider or esteem as belonging. Abraham believed in God, and he counted it to him for righteousness. – Gen. xv.
4. To esteem; to account; to reckon; to think, judge or consider. I count them my enemies. – Ps. cxxxix. Neither count I my life dear to myself. – Acts xx. I count all things loss. – Phil. iii.
5. To impute; to charge. – Rowe.

1. To tell or name one by one, or by groups, for the purpose of ascertaining the whole number of units in a collection; to number; to enumerate; to compute; to reckon.
   
   

   Who can count the dust of Jacob?
   Num. xxiii. 10.

   In a journey of forty miles, Avaux counted only three miserable cabins.
   Macaulay.

2. To number or be counted; to possess value or carry weight; hence, to increase or add to the strength or influence of some party or interest; as, every vote counts; accidents count for nothing.
   
   

   This excellent man . . . counted among the best and wisest of English statesmen.
   J. A. Symonds.

3. The act of numbering; reckoning; also, the number ascertained by counting.
   
   

   Of blessed saints for to increase the count.
   Spenser.

   By this count, I shall be much in years.
   Shak.

4. A nobleman on the continent of Europe, equal in rank to an English earl.
   
   

   * Though the tittle Count has never been introduced into Britain, the wives of Earls have, from the earliest period of its history, been designated as Countesses. Brande *** C.

   Count palatine. (a) Formerly, the proprietor of a county who possessed royal prerogatives within his county, as did the Earl of Chester, the Bishop of Durham, and the Duke of Lancaster. [Eng.] See County palatine, under County. (b) Originally, a high judicial officer of the German emperors] afterward, the holder of a fief, to whom was granted the right to exercise certain imperial powers within his own domains. [Germany]

5. To place to an account; to ascribe or impute; to consider or esteem as belonging.
   
   

   Abracham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.
   Rom. iv. 3.

6. To reckon; to rely; to depend; -- with on or upon.
   
   

   He was brewer to the palace; and it was apprehended that the government counted on his voice.
   Macaulay.

   I think it a great error to count upon the genius of a nation as a standing argument in all ages.
   Swift.

7. An object of interest or account; value; estimation.
   
   
   [Obs.] "All his care and count." Spenser.
8. To esteem; to account; to reckon; to think, judge, or consider.
   
   

   I count myself in nothing else so happy
   As in a soul remembering my good friends.
   Shak.

   To count out. (a) To exclude (one) from consideration; to be assured that (one) will not participate or cannot be depended upon. (b) (House of Commons) To declare adjourned, as a sitting of the House, when it is ascertained that a quorum is not present. (c) To prevent the accession of (a person) to office, by a fraudulent return or count of the votes cast; -- said of a candidate really elected. [Colloq.]

   Syn. -- To calculate; number; reckon; compute; enumerate. See Calculate.

9. To take account or note; -- with
   
   
   of. [Obs.] "No man counts of her beauty." Shak.
10. A formal statement of the plaintiff's case in court; in a more technical and correct sense, a particular allegation or charge in a declaration or indictment, separately setting forth the cause of action or prosecution.
    
    
    Wharton.

    * In the old law books, count was used synonymously with declaration. When the plaintiff has but a single cause of action, and makes but one statement of it, that statement is called indifferently count or declaration, most generally, however, the latter. But where the suit embraces several causes, or the plaintiff makes several different statements of the same cause of action, each statement is called a count, and all of them combined, a declaration. Bouvier. Wharton.

11. To plead orally; to argue a matter in court; to recite a count.
    
    
    Burrill.