CRYPTOGRAPHY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Cryptography

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noun

Cryptography n.

The act or art of writing in code or secret characters; also, secret characters, codes or ciphers, or messages written in a secret code.

The science which studies methods for encoding messages so that they can be read only by a person who knows the secret information required for decoding, called the key; it includes cryptanalysis, the science of decoding encrypted messages without possessing the proper key, and has several other branches; see for example steganography.

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Etymology of 'Cryptography'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Cryptography" Quotes from Famous Books

... — N. concealment; hiding &c v.; occultation, mystification. seal of secrecy; screen &c 530; disguise &c 530; masquerade; masked battery; hiding place &c 530; cryptography, steganography^; freemasonry. stealth, stealthiness, sneakiness; obreption^; slyness &c (cunning) 702. latitancy^, latitation^; seclusion &c 893; privacy, secrecy, secretness^; incognita. reticence; reserve; mental reserve, reservation; arriere pensee [Fr.], suppression, evasion, white lie, misprision; ...

— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Brunswick, and other more recent writers. The Gentleman's Magazine for 1742, contains a very ingenious system of deciphering: but the old modes of secret writing having been, for the most part, superseded by the modern system of cryptography, in which, according to a simple rule which may be communicated verbally, and easily retained in the memory, the signs for the letters can be changed continually; it is the chiffre quarr'e or chiffre ind'echiffrable, used, if not universally, yet by most courts. None of the old systems ...

— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... which neither Joam Dacosta nor his people could have anticipated. In fact, as those who have not forgotten the first scene in this story are aware, the document was written in a disguised form in one of the numerous systems used in cryptography. ...

— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne