counterjumper

English

Alternative forms

• counter-jumper

Etymology

From counter +‎ jumper.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

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Noun

counterjumper (plural counterjumpers)

1. (slang, derogatory, dated) A salesman in a shop; a shopman or clerk.

   Synonym: sales clerk

   • 1905, W. Somerset Maugham, chapter V, in The Merry-Go-Round:

     [...] and the chastest women thought it no shame for their pictures to be exposed in every stationer's shop or to decorate the chimney-piece of a platonic counter-jumper.

   • 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “ch. 15”, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC:

     Her manner was brisk, and her good-breeding scarcely concealed her conviction that if you were not a soldier you might as well be a counter-jumper.

Translations

a salesman in a shop; a shopman or clerk

• Russian: прика́зчик (ru) m (prikázčik), продаве́ц (в магази́не) m (prodavéc (v magazíne))
• Swedish: knodd (sv) c, bodknodd (sv) c

Further reading

• “counterjumper”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “counterjumper”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “counterjumper”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.