Definition of "countinghouse" [count•ing•house]

• A building, room, or office in which a business firm carries on operations such as accounting and correspondence. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Morris stayed busy enough in the daytime, shuttling between committee offices, the countinghouse, and the waterfront, where he harangued teams of seamen and stevedores—“I have scolded the officers like a gutter-whore,” he said of one laggard crew."
• "The unwitting instigator was John Brown, a former clerk in the Willing & Morris countinghouse, who was sent by Thomas Willing to deliver a secret message that originated with the British high command."
• "Quartered at the southern end of the Philadelphia waterfront, Willing operated a countinghouse, warehouse, a retail store, and below those, a wharf, berth to his several square-rigged frigates."