Discuss cipher here.
noun
Ordinary Language:
Literally
1) In the same sense as “A person of no worth or moment.”
2) A character of any kind used in writing or in printing.
3) Shorthand
“His speeches were much heeded, and taken by divers in ciphers.” - Hacket
Figuratively
1) A person of no worth or moment.
“If the people be somewhat in the election, you cannot make them nulls or ciphers in the privation or translation.” - Bacon
2) Worthlessness, sham, unreality.
“Mine were the very cipher of a function.” - Shakespeare
Technically
1) [Math]: A mark or character (0) which of itself possesses no value, but when placed after any number increases its value tenfold. In decimal fractions the placing of a cipher before a number decreases its value in the same proportion.
“The cipher of itself implies a privation of value; but when disposed with other characters on the left of it, in the common arithmetic, it serves to augment each of their values by ten; and in decimal arithmetic, to lessen the value of each figure to the right of it, in the same proportion.” - Chambers
2) [Engraving]: A combination or interweaving of two or more letters, especially the initials of a name; a monogram.
3) [Correspondence]: A secret or occult code or alphabet used in carrying on correspondence between two parties when it is important that the contents should be unintelligible to any third person into whose hands it might accidentally come, and who did not possess the key.
“This paper was signed in cipher by the seven chiefs of the conspiracy. . . ” - Macaulay
4) [Astrology]: An occult sign or figure.
“With that he circles draws, and squares,
With ciphers, astral characters.” - Butler
5) [Music]: The sounding of a note on an organ or wind instrument, by an escape of wind through it, without that note having been touched by the player.
verb intransitive
1) [Ordinary Language]: To practice arithmetic; to work out sums.
“We have long drawn our supply of roofing-slates from such quarries; school-boys ciphered on these slates, . . .” - Tyndail
2) [Music]: Used of an organ or harmonium, when through some defect the wind escapes and sounds through any note without that note having been touched by the player.
verb transitive
1) [Literally]: To write in cipher or secret characters.
“His father engaged him when he was very young to write all his letters to England in cipher.” - Bp. Burnet
2) [Figuratively]:
(1) To designate, to characterize, to depict.
“The face either ciphered either’s heart.” - Shakespeare
(2) To decipher, to interpret.
“To cipher what is writ in learned books.” - Shakespeare
[Old French cifre; French chiffre, from Low Latin cifra = nothing, from Arab sifr = a cipher (Skeat); Spanish and Portuguese cifra; Italian cifra, cifera; German ziffer.]
CIPHER, or Cypher (from Arab. sifr, void), the symbol o, nought, or zero; and so a name for symbolic or secret writing (see Cryptography), or even for shorthand, and also in elementary education for doing simple sums (“ciphering”).
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