Counter : nm Table, long and narrow support, on which a merchant receives the money, shows or serves the goods.
Counter accident: drunkenness.
Working on the counter: getting drunk.
Counter spider: merchant.
Counter callus: swollen stomach (from drinks); big belly acquired by dint of drinking.
Counter fly: (from English barfly) Regular customer.
Noughts and crosses: regular customer.
Counter wine: any wine.
Counter-top malaria: illness due to excess alcohol.
Countertop laryngitis: having a hoarse voice from drinking too much; voice broken from drinking.
Counter thief: thief who practices counter theft.
The expression "A short counter": A very short and funny story, typical of a bistro conversation.
The name brief has here the meaning given to it in journalistic publications: it is a short story, lasting only a few lines.
As for the counter, in the XNUMXth century, it was first and foremost the table on which the merchant displayed his merchandise and counted the money.
In the XNUMXth century, counter takes the meaning of "a sort of table where there is commonly a lockable drawer, and which merchants use, either to count their money, or to hold it" (Dictionary of the French Academy of 1798), and also designates one of those places of trade established in distant countries (think of Chandernagor or Pondicherry in India, for example).
In contemporary language, it will take several meanings, but it will designate in particular the zinc from the bistro which for a long time is often no longer in zinc.
Expression counter brief seems to have been imagined (or, in any case, popularized) by Jean-Marie Gourio in 1988, when he titled his first anthologies with witticisms directly captured during these bistro conversations.
– Quote from the American writer John Fante (1909-1983): “Again she stood in front of the counter waiting for her beers and her eyes never left me, shining with their strange wish” in the novel Ask the dust (1939)
– Quote from Yvan Audouard, French man of letters (1914-2004): “Good counters make good friends”.