Every kitchen has a counter, a surface on which food is prepared before it is carried to the oven or the table. The name of this kitchen furnishing is not related to the identically spelt counter that means contrary, as in counter-clockwise; that counter—the contrary one—derives from the Latin preposition contra, meaning against. On the other hand, two words that do not resemble the culinary counter—amputate and reputation—are indeed its relatives. The common source of these three words is the Latin putare, meaning both to cut away and, by extension, to reckon. From the former sense arose the word amputate, literally a cutting away while from the latter sense arose the word reputation, a reckoning of one’s merit. The word counter also developed out of the reckoning sense of putare: the ancient Romans combined putare with the preposition cum to form computare, meaning to reckon together. Computare is obviously the direct source of the word compute, but it also developed into the French word countour, the name of a financial officer who collected and reckoned debts. English adopted this job name in the thirteenth century, respelling it as counter about fifty years later. In the seventeenth century, the word shifted its meaning from the financial officer to the desk at which he sat, and in the nineteenth century it came to denote any sort of desk-like surface, whether found in a bank, shop, or kitchen.