cipher

• cypher (less common)

14th century. From Middle English cifre, from Old French cyfre, cyffre (French chiffre), ultimately from Arabic صِفْر‎ (ṣifr, “zero, empty”), from صَفَرَ‎ (ṣafara, “to be empty”). Doublet of zero. Sense 9 may be a different word.[1]

• Hyphenation: ci‧pher
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈsaɪfə/

  • Audio (UK)

    (file)

• (US, Canada) enPR: ˈsī-fər, IPA^(key): /ˈsaɪfɚ/

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪfə(ɹ)

cipher (plural ciphers)

1. A numeric character.

   Synonyms: number, numeral

2. Any text character.
   • 1614, Walter Ralegh [i.e., Walter Raleigh], The Historie of the World […], London: […] William Stansby for Walter Burre, […], OCLC 37026674, (please specify |book=1 to 5):

     This understanding wisdom began to be written in ciphers and characters and letters bearing the forms of creatures.

3. A combination or interweaving of letters, as the initials of a name.

   Synonyms: device, monogram

   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), OCLC 630079698, page 290:

     Just then, an attendant to whom the Queen had whispered returned; and taking a small case from her hand, Anne produced a bracelet somewhat similar to the very one with which Francesca had parted, excepting that it had her cipher, surrounded by a wreath of fleurs-de-lis. "Louis, will you offer this to Mademoiselle Carrara?"

   a painter's cipher

   an engraver's cipher

4. A method of transforming a text in order to conceal its meaning.

   Synonym: code

   The message was written in a simple cipher. Anyone could figure it out.

   • 1724, [Gilbert] Burnet, [Gilbert Burnet Jr.], editor, Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] Thomas Ward […], OCLC 863504080:

     His father […] engaged him when he was very young to write all his letters to England in cipher.

5. (cryptography) A cryptographic system using an algorithm that converts letters or sequences of bits into ciphertext.

   a public-key cipher

6. Ciphertext; a message concealed via a cipher.

   The message is clearly a cipher, but I can't figure it out.

7. A grouping of three digits in a number, especially when delimited by commas or periods:

   The probability is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000 — a number having five ciphers of zeros.

8. (music) A fault in an organ valve which causes a pipe to sound continuously without the key having been pressed.
9. (music, slang) A hip-hop jam session.[2]
   • 2011, “The World Is Listening”, in The Journey Aflame, performed by Akua Naru:

     They say no girls in the cipher, so I rock solo

10. (slang) The path (usually circular) shared cannabis takes through a group, an occasion of cannabis smoking.

    Synonym: rotation

    • 1993, “Midnight”, performed by A Tribe Called Quest:

      As the night seemed darker, cops is on a hunt / They interrupt your cipher, and crush your blunt

11. Someone or something of no importance.

    Synonyms: nobody, nonentity, nothing; see also Thesaurus:nonentity

    • 1724, [Gilbert] Burnet, [Gilbert Burnet Jr.], editor, Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] Thomas Ward […], OCLC 863504080:

      There he was a mere cipher.

12. (dated) Zero.

• zero

cipher (third-person singular simple present ciphers, present participle ciphering, simple past and past participle ciphered)

1. (intransitive, regional, dated) To calculate.

   I never learned much more than how to read and cipher.

   • 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. IX, Abbot Samson”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, OCLC 191225086, book II (The Ancient Monk):

     For the mischief that one blockhead, that every blockhead does, in a world so feracious, teeming with endless results as ours, no ciphering will sum up.

   • a. 1887 (date written)​, Emily Dickinson, “[Book IV.—Time and Eternity] (please specify the chapter or poem)”, in Mabel Loomis Todd and T[homas] W[entworth] Higginson, editors, Poems, First Series, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, published 1890, OCLC 1001812663, page 115:

     So I must baffle at the hint / And cipher at the sign, / And make much blunder, if at last / I take the clew divine.

   • 1979, Octavia Butler, Kindred:

     Can you cipher too—along with your reading and writing?

2. (intransitive) To write in code or cipher.
3. (intransitive, music) Of an organ pipe: to sound independent of the organ.
4. (obsolete) To decipher.
   • 1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], OCLC 236076664:

     the illiterate that know not how
     To cipher what is writ in learned bookes,

• Perich, ceriph, chipre, rechip