| to bark; yelp. |
| to chew (food) slowly and thoroughly. |
cipher or cypher (ˈsaɪfə) ![]() | |
| —n | |
| 1. | a method of secret writing using substitution or transposition of letters according to a key |
| 2. | a secret message |
| 3. | the key to a secret message |
| 4. | an obsolete name for zero |
| 5. | any of the Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, etc, to 9) or the Arabic system of numbering as a whole |
| 6. | a person or thing of no importance; nonentity |
| 7. | a design consisting of interwoven letters; monogram |
| 8. | music a defect in an organ resulting in the continuous sounding of a pipe, the key of which has not been depressed |
| —vb | |
| 9. | to put (a message) into secret writing |
| 10. | (intr) (of an organ pipe) to sound without having the appropriate key depressed |
| 11. | rare to perform (a calculation) arithmetically |
| [C14: from Old French cifre zero, from Medieval Latin cifra, from Arabic sifr zero, empty] | |
| cypher or cypher | |
| —n | |
| —vb | |
| [C14: from Old French cifre zero, from Medieval Latin cifra, from Arabic sifr zero, empty] | |
cipher
any method of transforming a message to conceal its meaning. The term is also used synonymously with ciphertext or cryptogram in reference to the encrypted form of the message. A brief treatment of ciphers follows. For full treatment, see cryptology.
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