'Counterfeit' is Old French for 'made against' — a copy created to oppose the original.
Made in exact imitation of something valuable with the intention to deceive; a fraudulent imitation; to imitate fraudulently.
From Old French 'contrefait,' past participle of 'contrefaire' (to imitate, to forge, to copy), from 'contre-' (against, opposite — from Latin 'contrā') + 'faire' (to do, to make — from Latin 'facere'). Latin 'facere' derives from PIE *dʰeh₁- (to put, to place, to set), the most productive root in Indo-European verbal morphology: it produced Latin 'facere' (to do — 'fact,' 'factory,' 'affect,' 'confect,' 'defeat,' 'effect,' 'infect,' 'perfect,' 'proficient'), 'fieri' (to become, to be made — 'fiat'), Greek 'títhēmi' (τίθημι, to place — 'thesis,' 'theme,' 'epithet,' 'antithesis,' 'parenthesis'), Sanskrit 'dadhāti' (he places), and Old English 'dōn' (to do). Latin 'contrā' (against, in opposition to) derives from the locative of PIE
The '-feit' in 'counterfeit' is the same '-fait/-fact' hidden in dozens of English words from Latin 'facere': 'forfeit' (fait outside the rules), 'surfeit' (fait in excess), and 'defeat' (un-done, from Old French 'desfait'). The disguise is so thorough that most English speakers do not recognize 'counterfeit,' 'forfeit,' 'surfeit,' and 'defeat' as siblings — all descendants of Latin 'facere.'
Words closest in meaning, ranked by similarity