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ziero0
6th July 2019, 06:41 PM
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cipher (n.)
late 14c., "arithmetical symbol for zero," from Old French cifre "nought, zero," Medieval Latin cifra, which, with Spanish and Italian cifra, ultimately is from Arabic sifr "zero," literally "empty, nothing," from safara "to be empty;" a loan-translation of Sanskrit sunya-s "empty." Klein says Modern French chiffre is from Italian cifra.
The word came to Europe with Arabic numerals. From "zero," it came to mean "any numeral" (early 15c.), then (first in French and Italian) "secret way of writing; coded message" (a sense first attested in English 1520s), because early codes often substituted numbers for letters. Meaning "the key to a cipher or secret writing" is by 1885, short for cipher key (by 1835).
Figurative sense of "something or someone of no value, consequence, or power" is from 1570s.


Wonder why Cipher was the name of the traitor in the first Matrix film?

midnight rambler
6th July 2019, 06:43 PM
Because he was a zero?

ziero0
6th July 2019, 07:32 PM
Because he was a zero?
Likely. The matrix is composed of ones (neo ... one) and zeros (cipher). This is as close to black and white as you are likely to encounter.

vacuum
6th July 2019, 08:48 PM
The modern usage of "cipher" typically means a specific encryption scheme.

For example, a very simple cipher would be to take a message, and shift every letter by three characters. That means "A" becomes "D", "N" becomes "Q", etc. To get the original message back, simply shift by three characters in the other direction.

This isn't a very good cipher, better ones are based on more advanced mathematic operations than a simple shift. But the point is, the cipher is the scheme which is used to encode and decode something.

ziero0
7th July 2019, 05:36 AM
The modern usage of "cipher" ...

Yes. That is modern interpretation but modern usage of words is part of societies corruption. Older usage should be made reference to otherwise chaos rules. Two examples

1. Farmer ... older usage means "tax collector"
2. Climate ... original meaning "angle sun strikes the surface of the earth"

Farmer now means "one engaged in the occupation of agriculture. Climate now becomes part of 'climate change' which means "man's effect upon global warming".