| 释义 |
▪ I. cipher, cypher, n.|ˈsaɪfə(r)|
Forms: 4 sipher, -re, 6 cyfer, -re, cifer, -ra, -re, ciphre, -ra, sypher, -re, ziphre, (scypher), 6–7 cyphar, 7 cyphre, ciphar, zifer, 6– cypher, cipher.
[a. OF. cyfre, cyffre (mod.F. chiffre) = Sp. Pg. It. cifra, med.L. cifra, cifera, ciphra, f. Arab. çifr the arithmetical symbol ‘zero’ or ‘nought’ (written in Indian and Arabic numeration {arzero}), a subst. use of the adj. çifr ‘empty, void’, f. çafara to be empty. The Arabic was simply a translation of the Sanscrit name śūnya, literally ‘empty’.]
1. a. An arithmetical symbol or character (o) of no value by itself, but which increases or decreases the value of other figures according to its position. When placed after any figure or series of figures in a whole number it increases the value of that figure or series tenfold, and when placed before a figure in decimal fractions, it decreases its value in the same proportion.
1399Langl. Rich. Redeles iv. 53 Than satte summe, as siphre doth in awgrym, That noteth a place, and no thing availith. c1400Test. Love ii. (1560) 286 b/1 Although a sipher in augrim have no might in signification of it selve, yet he yeveth power in signification to other. 1547J. Harrison Exhort. Scottes 229 Our presidentes..doo serue but as Cyphers in Algorisme, to fill the place. a1593H. Smith Serm. (1622) 310 You are..like cyphers, which supply a place, but signifie nothing. 1611Shakes. Wint. T. i. ii. 6 Like a Cypher (Yet standing in rich place) I multiply With one we thanke you, many thousands moe, That goe before it. 1660Milton Free Commw. 429 Only like a great Cypher set to no purpose before a long row of other significant Figures. 1718J. Chamberlayne Relig. Philos. (1730) I. xvi. §22 With 39 Noughts or Cyphers following. 1801–15M. Edgeworth Frank (ed. 2) III. 143 It was said..that all Cambridge scholars call the cipher aught and all Oxford scholars call it nought. 1827Hutton Course Math. I. 4 The first nine are called Significant Figures, as distinguished from the cipher, which is of itself quite insignificant.
†b. The zero-point, or zero, of a thermometer. U.S.
1796Morse Amer. Geog. I. 475 The range of the quick⁓silver..is between the 24th degree below, and the 105th degree above cypher. 1815D. Drake Cincinnati ii. 94 From nine years observations, at Cincinnati, it appears that the thermometer falls below cypher twice every winter.
2. fig.
a. A person who fills a place, but is of no importance or worth, a nonentity, a ‘mere nothing’.
1579Lyly Euphues (Arb.) 46 If one be hard in conceiuing they pronounce him a dowlte..if without speach, a Cipher. 1639Fuller Holy War ii. v. (1840) 54 At this day the Roman emperor is a very cipher, without power or profit in Rome. 1770Langhorne Plutarch (1879) I. 252/1 The tribunes' office, which has made ciphers of the consuls. 1844H. H. Wilson Brit. India I. 259 The Raja was a cypher: the Dewan usurped the whole power. 1852Thackeray Esmond i. iii. (1876) 24 To the lady and lord rather—his lordship being little more than a cypher in the house.
b. of things.
1603Shakes. Meas. for M. ii. ii. 39 Mine were the verie Cipher of a Function To fine the faults..And let goe by the Actor. 1844Ld. Brougham Brit. Const. viii. (1862) 105 The impotent estate being reduced to a cipher, is as if it had no existence.
3. In an extended sense, applied to all the Arabian numerals; a numeral figure; a number.
1530Palsgr. 684/2, I reken, I counte by cyfers of agrym. 1640Recorde, etc. Gr. Artes, Of those ten [figures] one doth signifie nothing..and is privately called a Cypher, though all the other sometime be likewise named. 1656Blount Glossogr., Cipher, a figure or number. 1756J. Warton Ess. Pope (1782) I. §31. 185 It was Gerbert, who..is said to have introduced into France, the Arabian and Indian cypher. 1858Carlyle Fredk. Gt. (1865) VII. xviii. i. 92, I remember to have seen ‘150 millions’ loosely given as the exaggerated cipher. 1875Renouf's Egypt. Gram. 13 Numbers are almost always expressed by means of ciphers.
†4.
a. gen. A symbolic character, a hieroglyph.
1533Elyot Cast. Helthe (1541) A iv, They wolde have deuysed a strange syphre or fourme of letters, wherin they wold have writen their science. 1555Fardle Facions i. iv. 40 Yeat ware not their Letters facioned to ioyne together in sillables like ours, but Ziphres, and shapes of men and of beastes. 1614Raleigh Hist. World (J.) In succeeding times this wisdom began to be written in ciphers and characters, and letters bearing the form of creatures.
†b. An astrological sign or figure. Obs.
1590Spenser F.Q. iii. ii. 45 May learned be by cyphers, or by Magicke might. 1664Butler Hud. ii. iii. 988 He circles draws, and squares, With ciphers, astral characters.
fig.1841–44Emerson Ess. Circles Wks. (Bohn) I. 125 The eye..is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world.
5. a. A secret or disguised manner of writing, whether by characters arbitrarily invented (app. the earlier method), or by an arbitrary use of letters or characters in other than their ordinary sense, by making single words stand for sentences or phrases, or by other conventional methods intelligible only to those possessing the key; a cryptograph. Also anything written in cipher, and the key to such a system.
1528Gardiner in Pocock Rec. Ref. I. No. 48. 92 We think not convenient to write them, but only in cipher. 1587Fleming Cont. Holinshed III. 1371/1 Letters betweene them were alwaies written in cipher. 1605Bacon Adv. Learn. ii. xvi. §6 The kinds of ciphers..are many, according to the nature or rule of the infolding, wheel-ciphers, key-ciphers, doubles, etc. 1652Evelyn Mem. (1857) I. 289, I had also addresses and cyphers, to correspond with his Majesty and Ministers abroad. 1748Hartley Observ. Man i. i. 15 We admit the Key of a Cypher to be a true one, when it explains the Cypher completely. 1812Wellington in Gurw. Disp. IX. 235 We have deciphered the letter you sent and it goes back to you with the key of the cipher. 1839–57Alison Hist. Europe VIII. lii. §5. 293 Intercepting some of the correspondence in cipher. 1885Gordon in Standard 24 Feb., Cypher letter..which I cannot decypher, for Colonel Stewart took the cypher with him.
†b. ciphers: Shorthand; = character 3 b.
1541Elyot Image Gou. 28 Secretaries or clerkes..in briefe notes or syphers made for that purpose, wrate euery woorde that by those counsaillours was spoken. a1670Hacket Abp. Williams i. 82 (D.) His speeches were much heeded, and taken by divers in ciphers.
c. fig.
a1674Clarendon Surv. Leviath. (1676) 12 To open the cipher of other mens thoughts. 1854B. Taylor Poems Orient, L'Envoi, I found among the children of the Sun The cipher of my nature.
6. An intertexture of letters, esp. the initials of a name, engraved or stamped on plate, linen, etc.; a literal device, monogram; now esp. used of Turkish or Arabic names so expressed.
1631Massinger Beleeve as You List v. ii, Pull out the stone, and under it you shall finde My name, and cipher I then usde, ingraven. a1672Wood Life (1848) 87 note, Above [the portrait] is his cypher. 1764Harmer Observ. xix. x. 425 The Emir's flourish or cypher at the bottom, signifying, ‘The poor, the abject Mehemet, son of Turabeye’. 1824J. Johnson Typogr. I. 348 At the end is Caxton's cypher on a white ground. Mod. Turkish coins bearing no device except the Sultan's cipher.
7. The continuous sounding of any note upon an organ, owing to the imperfect closing of the pallet or valve without any pressure upon the corresponding key.
1779Burney Infant Music. in Phil. Trans. LXIX. 198 He weakened the springs of two keys at once, which, by preventing the valves of the wind-chest from closing, occasioned a double cipher. 1884W. S. Rockstro Mendelssohn xii. 82 During the course of the Fantasia..a long treble A began to sound on the swell..We well remember whispering to Mr. Vincent Novello..‘It must be a cypher’.
8. attrib. and in Comb., as cipher bishop (sense 2); cipher-letter, cipher-telegram, cipher-writing, etc. (sense 5); cipher-key, the key to writings in cipher; cipher officer, an officer in the military or diplomatic services responsible for the coding and decoding of ciphers; † cipher-tunnel, a false or mock chimney.
1649Milton Eikon. Wks. (1738) I. 377 That foolish and self-undoing Declaration of twelve *Cypher Bishops.
1872Tennyson Gareth & Lynette 64 A red And *cipher face of rounded foolishness.
1915O. Williams Let. 23 Mar. in C. Mackenzie Gallipoli Mem. (1929) ii. 7 I'm *cipher officer on his Staff with the rank of Captain. 1948Hansard CDXLVIII. 1539 The smooth running of an embassy abroad depends just as much on a happy, contented, well-paid staff of cipher officers..as..on the..head of the Mission.
1831Carlyle Sart. Res. (1858) 20 Laughter: the *cipher key, wherewith we decipher the whole man!
1880Brit. Post. Guide 242 *Cypher telegrams are those containing series or groups of figures or letters having a secret meaning; or words not to be found in a standard dictionary.
1655Fuller Ch. Hist. v. iii. §46 The device of *Cypher Tunnels or mock-Chimneys meerly for uniformity of building.
▪ II. cipher, v.|ˈsaɪfə(r)|
Forms see n.
[f. prec. n.]
1. intr. To use the Arabic numerals in the processes of arithmetic; to work the elementary rules of arithmetic; now chiefly a term of elementary education.
1530Palsgr. 485/1 I cyfer, I acompte or reken by algorisme. 1598Florio, Zifrare, to cifre or cast account. 1633Massinger Guardian i. i, Let him know No more than how to cipher well. 1770Goldsm. Des. Vill. 208 'Twas certain he could write and cypher too. 1868M. Pattison Academ. Org. 64 All children should learn to read, write, and cipher.
b. trans. To work out arithmetically.
1860Holland Miss Gilbert ii. 45 The manufacturer ciphered it with his eyes on the ceiling.
c. To calculate, cast in the mind, think out. (U.S. colloq.)
1837–40Haliburton Clockm. (1862) 18 The constable had a writ agin him, and he was cyphering a good while how he should catch him. 1847Emerson Repr. Men, Napoleon Wks. (Bohn) I. 368 Bonaparte superadded to this mineral and animal force, insight and generalization..as if the sea and land had taken flesh and begun to cipher. 1882Mark Twain Roughing It xv. (Hoppe), She puzzles her brain to cipher out some scheme for getting it into my hands.
2. To express by characters of any kind; esp. to write in cipher or cryptogram.
1563–87Foxe Acts & Mon. (1596) 1074/1 Not onlie the Priests that marrie, but them also that saie or cypher that a Priest maie marrie. 1565–78Cooper Thesaurus, Notis scribere, to cipher. 1594Blundevil Exerc. v. vi. (ed. 7) 545 Such a kind of writing [Chinese], that every man of what nation soever..might pronounce in his mother tongue, even as it were Ciphered. 1630Hayward Edw. VI, 9 His notes he cyphered with greeke characters to the end that they who waited on him should not read them. 1779–81Johnson Lives Poets, Cowley, He was employed..in cyphering and decyphering the letters. 1837Carlyle Fr. Rev. II. iv. iii, Letters go in cipher,—one of them..hard to decipher; Fersen having ciphered it in haste.
†3. gen. To express, show forth, make manifest by any outward signs, portray, delineate. Const. forth, out. Obs.
1583Stubbes Anat. Abuses (1877) 26 You do well to request me to cipher foorth vnto you parts of those great abuses. 1590Greene Fr. Bacon (1861) 165 More I could not cipher-out by signs. 1593Shakes. Lucr. 207 The Herrald will contriue, To cipher me how fondlie I did dote. Ibid. 1396 The face of either cipher'd either's heart. 1640J. Gough Strange Discov. (N.), The characters of gravity and wisdome ciphered in your aged face.
†4. To decipher. Obs.
1593Shakes. Lucr. 811 The illiterate, that know not how To cipher what is writ in learned books.
†5. To express by a cipher, monogram, or the like.
a1628F. Greville Cælica lxxv, Wherein my name cyphered were. 1688Lond. Gaz. No. 2323/4 Which Watch belongeth to John Irving Esq.; and has his Name cyphered in silver Studds upon the Case.
†6. To make a cipher of, make nought of. Obs.
1589Puttenham Eng. Poesie (Arb.) 18 Ep. Ded., I considered that bestowyng vpon your Lordship the first vewe of this mine impression (a feat of mine owne simple facultie) it could not scypher her maiesties honour or prerogatiue in the guift, nor yet the Authour of his thanks.
7. Cricket. To assign a cipher to in the score, put out without scoring.
1882Daily Tel. 12 June, Neither he [Butler] nor Selby were destined to stay long, the former being cyphered to a full toss from Garrett, and the latter very finely caught by Bonnor.
8. intr. Of an organ: To sound any note continuously without pressure on the corresponding key. See cipher n. 7.
1779Burney Infant Music. in Phil. Trans. LXIX. 198 While he was playing the organ, a particular note hung, or, to speak the language of organ-builders, ciphered, by which the tone was continued without the pressure of the finger. 1869Haweis Gd. Words Supp. 1 Mar. 10/2 The organist is disturbed if his organ begins to cipher.
9. Naval. Arch. To bevel or chamfer away.
1674Petty Dupl. Proportion 23 If the same Triangular head [of a ship] be cyphered away into an Angle from bottom to top. 1711Lond. Gaz. No. 4935/4 Having the Edge next towards the Lince pin Cyphered off. |