cipher

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (3)  · 
Gulf who held the key to the cipher were the Superintendent of

View all »
Definitions (39)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (10)

  1. noun The mathematical symbol (0) denoting absence of quantity; zero.
  2. noun An Arabic numeral or figure; a number.
  3. noun One having no influence or value; a nonentity.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (17)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (5)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (7)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (49)

 

Tags

cipher hasn't been tagged yet.

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 176 times.

On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

Used in the same contextWord Family

cipher:   ciphers
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English cifre, from Old French, from Medieval Latin cifra, from Arabic ṣifr, from ṣafira, to be empty (translation of Sanskrit śūnyam, cipher, dot); see ṣpr1 in Semitic roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Also cypher, early modern English also cifer, cifre, from Middle English *cifre, ciphre = Dutch cijfer = Danish siffer = Swedish siffra, (. Old French cifre, French chiffre (later Swedish chiffer) = Spanish Portuguese cifra = Italian cifra, cifera = Middle High German zifer, ziffer, German ziffer, a number, a sign, from Middle Latin cifra, zifera, the figure 0, plural cifræ, the Arabic numerals (also applied to any occult characters), also (by association with zephyrus, zephyr) zephyrum (later Italian zefiro, contr. zero, later Spanish Portuguese zero = French zéro, later English zero, q. v.); from Arabic sifr, sefr, a cipher, literally empty, nothing, from safara, be empty.
  2. from cipher, n.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

/ˈsaɪfər/
by American Heritage

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a week.

Recently looked up

headwaiter · prowess · woo · procrastinate · raincoat

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

eu oi oìa u ou e u oìa · the octopi are dry · Kansas City · spell it rite · put it in your pocket