cipher

• (less common) cypher

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

cipher (plural ciphers)

1. A numeric character.
2. Any text character.
   • Sir Walter Raleigh

     This 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; a device; a monogram.

   a painter's cipher, an engraver's cipher, etc.

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

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

   • Bishop Burnet

     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.
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. A hip-hop jam session.[2]
10. The path (usually circular) shared cannabis takes through a group, an occasion of cannabis smoking.
11. Someone or something of no importance.
    • Washington Irving

      Here he was a mere cipher.

12. (dated) Zero.

• (numeric character): number, numeral
• (method for concealing the meaning of text): code
• (cryptographic system using an algorithm):
• (ciphertext):
• (a grouping of three digits in a number, especially when delimited):
• (design of interlacing initials): monogram
• (fault in an organ valve causing a pipe to sound continuously):
• (hip-hop jam session):
• (path that shared cannabis takes through a group):
• (someone or something of no importance): (person): nobody, nonentity, see also Thesaurus:nonentity; (thing) nonentity, nothing, nullity
• (obsolete: zero): naught/nought, nothing, oh, 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, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 2, ch. IX, Abbot Samson

     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.

   • pub. 1890,Emily Dickinson

     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.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)

• ceriph, rechip