cipher
pronunciation
How to pronounce cipher in British English:
UK [ˈsaɪfə(r)]
How to pronounce cipher in American English:
US [ˈsaɪfər]
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- Noun:
- a message written in a secret code
- a mathematical element that when added to another number yields the same number
- a quantity of no importance
- a person of no influence
- a secret method of writing
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- Verb:
- convert ordinary language into code
- make a mathematical calculation or computation
Word Origin
- cipher
- cipher: [14] The central meaning of cipher is ‘zero’ (a word to which it is related); its use since the 16th century in connection with encrypted communications derives from the fact that in their earliest forms such codes usually consisted of numbers representing letters, and cipher had by then broadened in use from ‘nought’ to ‘any numeral’. It entered English through Old French cifre, which came via medieval Latin cifra from Arabic sifr (source of English zero); this was a nominal use of an adjective meaning ‘empty’.=> zero
- cipher (n.)
- late 14c., "arithmetical symbol for zero," from Old French cifre "nought, zero," Medieval Latin cifra, with Spanish and Italian cifra, ultimately from Arabic sifr "zero," literally "empty, nothing," from safara "to be empty;" loan-translation of Sanskrit sunya-s "empty." The word came to Europe with Arabic numerals. Originally in English "zero," then "any numeral" (early 15c.), then (first in French and Italian) "secret way of writing; coded message" (a sense first attested in English 1520s), because early codes often substituted numbers for letters. Klein says Modern French chiffre is from Italian cifra.
- cipher (v.)
- "to do arithmetic" (with Arabic numerals), 1520s, from cipher (n.). Meaning "to write in code" is from 1560s. Related: Ciphered; ciphering.
Example
- 1. In short , murakami in japan is a commercially successful cipher .
- 2. And the engineer is no robotic cipher , but a very human enemy .
- 3. We could penetrate her solicitude to cipher the problem .
- 4. The letter was written in cipher .
- 5. Dissatisfied with such makeshift methods , louis braille , a student at the royal institute for blind youth in paris , began studying a cipher language of bumps , called night writing , developed by a french army officer so soldiers could send messages in the dark .