decipher
/dɪˈsaɪfər/verb
Interpret or uncover difficult, coded meaning
From Latin de- (down) + Arabic, via Medieval Latin and Old French cipher (zero).
Lineage
de-
cipher
The story
Zero arrived in Europe wearing a surprisingly exotic passport. Arabic ṣifr meant “empty” or “nothing,” translating the Sanskrit idea śūnya, and Medieval Latin cifra carried that mathematical emptiness into Old French as cifre and cyfre. At first, a cipher was simply zero; then it became any numeral, and eventually a secret code—probably because early code-makers liked replacing letters with numbers. In the 1520s, English decipher meant “find out” or “discover,” before settling into the more specialized job of cracking coded writing. By about 1600, the word escaped the world of secret messages: you could decipher handwriting, a facial expression, or a baffling argument. The memorable trick is that to decipher something is, literally, to pull meaning out of “nothing.”
Modern usage
A screen name or exceptionally cool DJ, according to low-trust Urban Dictionary entries.
- Heard in
- internet usernames · DJ culture