Under the counter  

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A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933)
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A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933)
  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).
    • 1969 The Seven Minutes: A Novel by Irving Wallace
      Oh, yeah, I remember, you mean about me not trying to sell from under the counter?
    • 2004, James Carlos Blake, Under the Skin
      When Prohibition became the law, they produced the stuff in greater quantity and sold it under the counter to anybody who wanted it.

Under-the-counter means transacted, given, or sold illicitly. In French this is called "sous le manteau".



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Under the counter" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on original research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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