Ciphers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A method or system for converting plain text into a coded format for secrecy
2. A series of symbols or characters used to represent information, often for secure communication
3. A key or algorithm applied to transform data into an obscure form, making it intelligible only to those with the appropriate decoding mechanism

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "ciphers" is that the word for secret writing began as a word for nothing at all. Its ancestor is Arabic "ṣifr," meaning "zero" or "empty," which passed into Medieval Latin and then into Old French as "cyfre" before reaching English in the 14th century as "cifre." The Arabic term was itself the name for the new numeral, the symbol that stood for an empty place, and the concept of zero was a novelty to European mathematicians of that era. From the numeral, the word spread to any hidden or coded writing, because a cipher replaces ordinary letters with other symbols, much as the digit zero stood in for nothing. The English noun thus kept the sense of a secret system of signs. Its close relatives are "chiffre" and "zero," which are doublets, meaning they entered English by different routes but share the same Arabic source.

Synonyms: codes, encryption, cryptographs, decoders, shadows

Antonyms: clarities, transparencies, plaintexts, open texts, revelations