cipher

noun

1. A numeric character.
2. Any text character.

   “In ſucceeding times this vnderſtanding wiſedome began to be written in Ciphers, and Characters, and letters bearing the forme of beaſtes, birds, and other creatures; […]”

3. A combination or interweaving of letters, as the initials of a name.

   “a painter's cipher”

   “an engraver's cipher”

   “Just then, an attendant to whom the Queen had whispered returned; and taking a small case from her hand, Anne produced a bracelet somewhat similar to the very one with which Francesca had parted, excepting that it had her cipher, surrounded by a wreath of fleurs-de-lis. "Louis, will you offer this to Mademoiselle Carrara?"”

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.”

   “He was very early engaged in great ſecrets: For his fatherr, apprehending of what fatal conſequence it would have been to the King’s affairs if his correſpondence had been diſcovered by unfaithful Secretaries, engaged him when very young to write all his letters to England in cypher; ſo that he was generally half the day writing in cypher, or decyphering, and was ſo diſcrect, as well as faithful, that nothing was ever diſcovered by him.”

5. A cryptographic system using an algorithm that converts letters or sequences of bits into ciphertext.

   “a public-key cipher”

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. A fault in an organ valve which causes a pipe to sound continuously without the key having been pressed.
9. (slang)A hip-hop jam session.

   “They say no girls in the cipher, so I rock solo”

10. (slang)The path (usually circular) shared cannabis takes through a group, an occasion of cannabis smoking.

    “As the night seemed darker, cops is on a hunt / They interrupt your cipher, and crush your blunt”

11. Someone or something of no importance.

    “There he was a mere cypher: here he was lord of the ascendant; the choice spirit, the dominant genius.”

12. (dated)Zero.

    “O pardon: ſince a crooked Figure may / Atteſt in little place a Million, / And let vs, Cyphers to this great Accompt, / On your imaginarie Forces worke.”

    “Firſt, Find what Decimal of a Pound .625 will Repreſent, which is eaſily done if you prepone a Cypher, and half the Number is the Decimal of a Pound. The Number with a Cypher preponed is .0625, ½ is .03125.”

    “We saw earlier about this new symbol, the cipher, that can make numbers big.”

verb

1. (dated, intransitive, regional)To calculate.

   “I never learned much more than how to read and cipher.”

   “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.”

   “So I must baffle at the hint / And cipher at the sign, / And make much blunder, if at last / I take the clew divine.”

   “Can you cipher too—along with your reading and writing?”

2. (intransitive)To write in code or cipher.
3. (intransitive)Of an organ pipe: to sound independent of the organ.
4. (obsolete)To decipher.

   “Yea the illiterate that know not how To cipher what is writ in learned bookes, VVill cote my lothſome treſpaſſe in my lookes.”