decode
/diːˈkəʊd
/verb [with object]
1Convert (a coded message) into intelligible language: he put down the phone and decoded the message...
- After all, the US had broken Japan's diplomatic codes and could sometimes decode messages faster than the Japanese themselves.
- The British, having broken into the German codes, decoded the telegram.
- In April 1943, America's intelligence decoded a Japanese message that informed them that Yamamoto was going to visit the northern Solomon Islands on April 18th.
Synonyms
decipher, decrypt, unravel, untangle, work out, sort out, piece together, solve, interpret, translate, construe, explain, understand, comprehend, apprehend, grasp;
make sense of, get to the bottom of, find the key to, find the answer to, throw light on
informal crack, figure out
British informal twig, suss, suss out
1.1Analyse and interpret (a communication or image): a handbook to help parents decode street language...
- In her chapter on visual representations of ‘Liberty’, Marina Warner decodes the icons of modern political orders that have become so familiar to us that we rarely think about their meanings.
- Theory can also help historians to interpret and decode visual documents.
- Roland Barthes had been struck by a camionette carrying the kind of advertising he'd analysed and decoded.
1.2Convert (audio or video signals) into a different or usable form, for example to analogue from digital in sound reproduction: processors used to decode CD-quality digital audio signals...
- Every time the digitiser ‘listens’ to the music it records a number that will allow that tiny slice of music to be reproduced when the digital audio is decoded and made into analogue music that you can hear.
- For those who don't have cable or satellite TV and don't want to shell out hundreds of dollars for a new set, a converter box will be available to receive and decode digital signals.
- Its ‘brain’ is the processor that decodes the video and audio signal received through the antenna cable into images that can be displayed on the PC monitor.
noun informal
A translation of a coded message: studying reports, poring over decodes...
- Instead, 321 pointed customers to separate decode software widely available on the Internet.
- The memory device also includes a counter circuitry coupled to the decode logic circuitry that generates a counter value based on the decoded address.
- Cimarron Technologies will announce the availability of a simultaneous multiple format decode option in their C Plus ANI decoders.
Derivatives
decodable
- At posttesting, D. W. was able to read 70% of the decodable real and nonsense words, in comparison to only 21% at the beginning of intervention.
- But, it wasn't until the late 1800s when archaeological record became severely damaged and almost not decodable.
- Students were taught through a series of decodable text with emphasis on phonics skills and grammar skills practice.