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Cypher   /sˈaɪfər/   Listen
Cypher

noun
1.
A mathematical element that when added to another number yields the same number.  Synonyms: 0, cipher, nought, zero.
2.
A quantity of no importance.  Synonyms: aught, cipher, goose egg, nada, naught, nil, nix, nothing, null, zero, zilch, zip, zippo.  "Reduced to nil all the work we had done" , "We racked up a pathetic goose egg" , "It was all for naught" , "I didn't hear zilch about it"
3.
A person of no influence.  Synonyms: cipher, nobody, nonentity.
4.
A secret method of writing.  Synonyms: cipher, cryptograph, secret code.
5.
A message written in a secret code.  Synonym: cipher.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Cypher" Quotes from Famous Books



... that Grotius's Letters are not all printed; and he adds, that he knew a cabinet in which were preserved upwards of two hundred and sixty, written to Queen Christina and the High Chancellor. Bunau, a Privy Counselor at Dresden, is said to have had many of them. Puffendorf saw several in cypher, to which he had a key. Among those, which are printed in the collection of Grotius's letters, there are some in cypher, relating to the general affairs and secret intrigues of the Court of France. M. de Boze has a copy of these letters in his curious cabinet, with an explanation of the cypher, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... relic of Sir Isaac survives in the garden at Cranbury Park, viz. a sun-dial, said to have been calculated by Newton. It is in bronze, in excellent preservation, and the gnomon so perforated as to form the cypher I. C. seen either way. The dial is divided into nine circles, the outermost divided into minutes, next, the hours, then a circle marked "Watch slow, Watch fast," another with the names of places shown when the hour coincides with our noonday, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... unconcerned, believing that their share in the matter was unknown, and that the Government was without a particle of evidence against them. And here we find that another blunder was made. Major Robert White, one of the raiders, had brought with him a despatch-box containing the key to a cypher, which had been used during the whole of the negotiations, and with it the names of the principal persons engaged in the conspiracy. Of course, this fell into the hands of the enemy, who were not slow to take ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... once come to the office a blind man with a knotted twig and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according to some cypher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds; and tried to teach me his ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling

... them there was a monogram, which was formed of the initial letters of the name of Christ, "X" and "P" being joined so as to form one cypher. Some bore a palm branch, the emblem of victory and immortality, the token of that palm of glory which shall hereafter wave in the hands of the innumerable throng that are to stand around the throne. Others bore ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous

... had spoiled him inordinately and unblushingly. Also, as she contentedly drew at the pipe filled with the offerings of choice smoking-tobacco which he frequently turned out of his pockets into her lap, she had taught him to read in her own broad Scottish accent, and to cypher. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... do still more, must pit himself against an irresponsible young fellow, who up to the present had shirked everything serious. And then Guentz's position as husband and father must be compared with his opponent's irregular life. An absolute cypher was opposed to a number that counted; and, moreover, to a number doubled ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... and he took out his tobacco, with something else which he threw into the fire. Cory saw this movement, and snatched it out, with a handful of coals. It was a small leaden box, about an eighth of an inch in thickness, containing a paper, written in cypher, which the men could not read. It was afterwards found to be a despatch to the British commander at New York, with an order upon the Mayor of that city for thirty pounds, if the despatch was safely delivered. Bettys knew that this paper alone would ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson

... you? It's tall paintin', makin' the brush walk at that price. Now there you are,' sais he. 'What's next? But, mind I've most filled my canvass; it will cost you a pretty considerable penny, if you want all them critters in, when I come to cypher all the pictur up, and sumtotalize the ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... fine day Ben wished us all good bye; my mother was very generous to him, as she could well afford to be. I rather think that Ben himself was not sorry to go, for, stupid as he was, he must have felt what a cypher he had become, being treated, not only by my mother, but by everybody else, even by me, as a ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... only seem so. Dry and prolix, indeed, it is to me in the writing, full as much as it can be to others in the attempt to understand it. But I know that, once mastered, the idea will be the key to the whole cypher of the AEschylean mythology. The sum stated in the terms of philosophic logic is this: First, what Moses appropriated to the chaos itself: what Moses made passive and a 'materia subjecta et lucis et tenebrarum', the containing [Greek: prothemenon] of the 'thesis' and 'antithesis';—this ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... handsome brass pestle 57 and mortar, with the gilt Galen's head annexed, have been waggishly transferred to the house of some Eton Dickey Gossip, barber and dentist. Mr. Index, the bookseller, changes names with old Frank Finis, the sexton. The elegant door plate of Miss Caroline Cypher, spinster, is placed on the right side ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... laughed. "Here, leave me the dirk, but take the sheath. Everything's there that we put there long ago, beloved, and also a cypher report of what I heard last night in the garden—never mind what!—take it, you will save Mobile! Now both of you slip through this hole and down ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... himself responsible for me. Also, he'd offered to pump me about what was best in the air world on my side of the water: how many aeroplanes of different sorts America could turn out in six months, etc. We contrived a cypher on diagrams I made. It was a clever one, but the ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the impression of the king's head; and on the other, the arms of Savoy, with a ducal crown, inscribed with his name and titles. There are of genuine copper, pieces of one sol, stamped on one side with a cross fleuree; and on the reverse, with the king's cypher and crown, inscribed as the others: finally, there is another small copper piece, called piccalon, the sixth part of a sol, with a plain cross, and on the reverse, a slip-knot surmounted with a crown; the legend as above. The impression and ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... rather the Bruce," Wallace said. "His father is an inert man and a mere cypher, and the death of his grandfather, the competitor, has now brought him prominently forward. It is true that he is said to be a strong adherent of England and a personal favourite of Edward; that he spends much of his time ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... invaluable, but it is still more interesting as, perhaps, the most singular example extant of unreserved self-revelation—all the foibles, peccadilloes, and more serious offences against decorum of the author being set forth with the most relentless naivete and minuteness, it was written in a cypher or shorthand, which was translated into long-hand by John Smith in 1825, and ed. by Lord Braybrooke, with considerable excisions. Later and fuller ed. have followed. P. left his books, MSS., and collections to Magdalene Coll., Camb., where ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... is no second place in numerous state That holds more than a cypher: in a King 35 All places are contain'd. His words and looks Are like the flashes and the bolts of Jove; His deeds inimitable, like the sea That shuts still as it opes, and leaves no tracts, Nor ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... informed Gianesi and Giambresi of the condition of their instrument, and bade them send another at once with a skilled operator, and to look out for probable tamperers in their own establishment. This despatch was in a cypher which before he got the new invention, and while he used the old wires, Mr. Macrae had arranged with the electricians. The words of the despatch were, therefore, peculiar, and the Highland lass who operated, a girl of great beauty and modesty, at ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... Full well the busy whisper, circling round, Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd; Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught, 205 The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declar'd how much he knew; 'Twas certain he could write, and cypher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And e'en the story ran that he could gauge. 210 In arguing too, the parson own'd his skill, For e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thund'ring sound Amazed the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... smiling, as always! On his huge face, where every passing day now leaves some marks, on his round-eyed weakened face with its mouth opened like a cypher, the old smile of yore is spread out. I used to think then that resignation was a virtue; I see now that it is a vice. The optimist is the permanent accomplice of all evil-doers. This passive smile which I admired but lately—I find it despicable on ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... "Mr. Cypher Redalf, the eminent journalist," in the proper person of Mr. A.P. Sinnett, editor of The Pioneer, a daily newspaper published at Allahabad, and then, as now to an increased degree, the leading English newspaper in India, printed in ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... is more trustworthy, and exhibits that inventiveness which was characteristic of his mind. He tells us in the De Augmentis that when he was in France he occupied himself with devising an improved system of cypher-writing—a thing of daily and indispensable use for rival statesmen and rival intriguers. But the investigation, with its call on the calculating and combining faculties, would also interest him, as an example of the discovery of new powers by ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... Tsar's safe conduct, which she exhibited. Instead of that she was taken before the chief of the Moscow police, rudely interrogated, and then brutally searched. Unhappily, in the bosom of her dress was found a piece of paper bearing some of the new police cypher. That was enough. That night they were thrown into prison, and three days later taken to the convict depot under sentence of exile by administrative ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... And whisper what a Proclamation says. They meet in sixes, and at ev'ry mart, Are sure to con the catalogue by heart; Or ev'ry day, some one at Rimee's looks, Or bills, and there he buys the name of books. They all get Porta, for the sundry ways To write in cypher, and the several keys, To ope the character. They've found the slight With juice of lemons, onions, piss, to write; To break up seals and close 'em. And they know, If the states make peace, how it will go With England. All forbidden books they get, And of the powder-plot, ...
— English Satires • Various

... no more Admits of, then I have all my store; But what mischance hath tane from my Lefthand, It seems did only for a cypher stand, Hence, when I scan my Verse if I do miss, I will impute the fault only to this, A fingers loss, I speak it not in sport, Will make a Verse ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley

... who by his representation and appearance makes things long past seeme present. He is much like the compters in arithmeticke, and may stand one while for a king, another while a begger, many times as a mute or cypher. Sometimes hee represents that which in his life he scarse practises—to be an honest man. To the point, hee oft personates a rover, and therein comes neerest to himselfe. If his action prefigure passion, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... man's privilege to read in the English language or in any other. Whether Pepys intended this Diary to be afterwards read by the general public or not—and this was a doubtful question when it was considered that he had left, possibly by inadvertence, a key to his cypher behind him—it was certain that he had left with us a most delightful picture, or rather he had left the power in our hands of drawing for ourselves some, of the most delightful pictures, of the time in which he lived. There was hardly any book which was analogous ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... 9: The presentation took place on the 29th of January. The jewel resembled a badge rather than a brooch, bearing a St George's Cross in red enamel, and the Royal cypher surmounted by a crown in diamonds. The inscription "Blessed are the Merciful" encircled the badge which also bore ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... reader of these pages has witnessed the exciting amusement, which so thrilled the blood of Jack Carleton that he could hardly restrain himself from taking part in the fun. But he had no crotched stick, without which he would have been a cypher, and then, as he had never attempted the game, he knew he possessed no skill. The venture would have been rash, for in the excited state of the Indian youths, and armed as they were with sticks, it is almost certain that at ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... of Suetonius, Caesar's official despatches to the Senate were extant, and also private letters to Cicero and other friends, e.g. his confidants Balbus and Oppius. In these a cypher was, where necessary, employed. Cf. Sueton. Iul. 56, and Gell. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... To cypher rates of wage Upon that printed page, There joined in the charmless scene And stood over me and the scribbled book (To lend the hour's mean hue A smear of tragedy too) A soldier and wife, with haggard look Subdued to stone by strong endeavour; And then I heard From a casual word They ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... all hands passes for a cypher to-day, if at all remembered hereafter, will be sure to pass for the same. For there is more likelihood of being overrated while living, than of being underrated when dead. And to insure your fame, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... person should have told us, that he sent a successor to a consular lieutenant of a province, as an ignorant, illiterate fellow, upon his observing that he had written ixi for ipsi. When he had occasion to write in cypher, he put b for a, c for b, and so forth; and instead of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... this little wreck of fame, Cypher and syllable, thine eye Has travell'd down to Matthew's name, ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... 4 subtracted, leaves 10! Why, sir, I done a whole slate full of letters and signs; and afterward, when I tried by figures, they every one of them came out right and brung the answer! I mean to cypher by ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... hands of strangers, and to what end? Simply that I, an old and worn-out man should, for a very few years, remain in power here. It would be necessary for those who placed me there to remain as my guardians, and I should be a mere cypher in their hands. Nothing, therefore, would persuade me to seek English aid ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... five and the cypher, are cut off, and they indicate the cents, the figures reading $1018^50, which is the true amount I shall get at the above ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money

... U-boats Appear off U.S.A., Sir E. Geddes's diagram re, Ulstermen and Conscription, Unauthorised flirtation, an, Unconquerable, Unemployment dole, United States Accused of stealing cypher key, German propaganda in, Issues warning Note on neutral trading, No peace ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... a Scottish University before you reckoned to buck the game on Wall Street, weren't you?" he went on, more moderately. He forced a grin into eyes that were scarcely accustomed. "One of those guys who mostly make two and two into four, and by no sort of imagination can cypher 'em into five. I know. You figgered out that Persian Oil gamble to suit yourself, and forgot to figger that Hellbeam was at the other end of it. No. The other feller don't cut any ice with you while you're playing around with figgers. It's only afterwards you find that figgers ain't the whole game, ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... were they at variance with the information which he possessed. He requested the correspondent to repeat the contents of the announcement, and then inquired: "Can I, in your opinion, telegraph it to the Foreign Office?" The answer being an emphatic affirmative, the Ambassador despatched a message in cypher to this effect to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs. For there could be no doubt about the accuracy of information thus deliberately given to the public by the journal which possessed a monopoly of military news and was the organ ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... answers. In the meanwhile I feared that he must consider himself as under close arrest. He himself was under the impression that all the trouble was due to the concealed arms; the Phoenix Park murders had never once been mentioned. I sent off a long telegram in cypher to the Stockholm Legation, making certain inquiries, and a longer one en clair to the British Consul at Gothenburg. By nagging at the Attache, and by keeping that dapper young gentleman's nose pretty ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... fruitless with regard to business. When he spoke to her about the prisoners, for whose release the Colonnas had desired him to intercede, her Majesty referred him to the council. She was now, in reality, only a state cypher. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... him," said Irene, coldly. "Become a cypher, a slave. That will not suit me, Hartley!" And she looked at him with firmly ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... only with little labelled papers of first curls, down as far as 'Edward Clement, 1842,' after which stern reality had absorbed sentiment—a sad declension from the blue enamel shrine with a pearl cypher, where Felix's downy ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... cloud of misfortune had its silver lining. That he was not a mere cypher was clear from the fact that the Anglo-Indian community on the one side and the Congress on the other were each waiting patiently, eager to hook him, and land him on their own side. So Nabendu, beaming with pleasure took the paper to his sister-in-law, and showed ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... engineer was relating a story and was just coming to the climax when he suddenly grasped the throttle, and in a moment had "thrown her over," that is, reversed the engine. The air brakes were applied and the train brought to a standstill within a few feet of the place where Engineer Cypher met his death two years ago. By this time the passengers had become curious as to what was the matter, and all sorts of questions were asked the trainmen. The engineer made an excuse that some of the machinery was loose, and in a ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... copies of his books, printed on vellum and suitably bound, to the libraries at Blois and Fontainebleau, and such others as the King should appoint. About eight hundred volumes in the national collection represent the immediate results of this copy-tax; they are all marked with the ambiguous cypher, which might either represent the initials of the King and Queen or might indicate the names of Henri and Diane. Queen Catherine de Medici was an enthusiastic collector. When she arrived in France as ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... that Scudder never did anything without a reason, and I was pretty sure that there was a cypher in all this. That is a subject which has always interested me, and I did a bit at it myself once as intelligence officer at Delagoa Bay during the Boer War. I have a head for things like chess and puzzles, and I used to reckon myself pretty ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan

... phrase, "The United States," substituting Appalachia, or Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter,) in place of America. The title of Appalachian, or Alleghanian, would still announce us as Americans, but would specify us as citizens of the Great Republic. Even our old national cypher of U. S. A. might remain unaltered, designating the United ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... their faith, as their reliance, was mutual. His letter, therefore, was less that of a lover to his mistress than one between man and man, written to a fellow-conspirator, most of it in figurative phrase, even some of it in cypher! ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... up"; and before a signalman can be roused we see clearly enough these palpitations resolving themselves into dots and dashes. It is a signal from the south, flashed by searchlight across miles of intervening hills, but in a cypher which only those who ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... funeral, two days later, Ben received a cypher telegram from the conductor on the train telling him that Gus was on the evening mail due at Piedmont ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... Claridge's," he called him. To Von Beust (the Austrian Chancellor), who spoke English in a rapid half-intelligible falsetto, he gave the name of Mirliton (penny trumpet). His allusions to Mirliton and to the Bishop frequently mystified Madame Novikoff's guests. For he loved to talk in cypher. Canon Warburton, kindly searching on my behalf his brother Eliot's journals, tells me that he and Kinglake, meeting almost daily, lived in a cryptic world of jokes, confidences, colloquialisms, inexplicable to all but their ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... Leonard Clare had become almost a dream to her. She had neither seen him nor heard of him since he let go her hand on that memorable evening beside the stream. He was a strange, bewildering chance, a cypher concealing a secret which she could not intelligently read. Why should she keep the memory of that power which was, perhaps, some unconscious quality of his nature (no, it was not so! something deeper than reason cried:), or long since forgotten, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... incumbent duties. The laws respecting woman, which I mean to discuss in a future part, make an absurd unit of a man and his wife; and then, by the easy transition of only considering him as responsible, she is reduced to a mere cypher. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... lower castle gate, built by the then reigning monarch, open, while from it issued four trumpeters clad in emblazoned coats, with silken bandrols depending from their horns, blowing loud fanfares. They were followed by twelve henchmen, walking four abreast, arrayed in scarlet tunics, with the royal cypher H.R. worked in gold on the breast, and carrying gilt poleaxes over their shoulders. Next came a company of archers, equipped in helm and brigandine, and armed with long pikes, glittering, as did their steel ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Wheatley's guidance. A cheap edition of his book, in 8 volumes, has recently been published by George Bell & Sons. I have No. 2 of the large paper edition of this book, No. 1 having gone to Pepys's own college of Brazenose, where the Pepys cypher ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter

... discussion, it was sagaciously concluded to seal up the doors and windows of all the apartments appropriated to my use. They then discovered that they had no seal fit for the purpose, and a new consultation was holden on the propriety of affixing a cypher which was offered them by one of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... "that in our present situation we should all be wrong to play the haughty when a chance offers itself, even outside our art, of putting a figure in front of the cypher that ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... times who have realised the fact that it is every Christian man's task, somehow or other, to set forth the great name of Jesus Christ. But still, alas, in a church with, say, 400 members, you may knock off the last cypher, and you will get a probably not too low statement of the number of people in it who have realised and fulfilled this obligation. What about the other 360 'dumb dogs, that will not bark'? And in that 360 there will probably be several men who can make speeches ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... betray a want of confidence in you, which I am persuaded Congress do not entertain, I am led to consider my not having received instructions to communicate them as a mere accidental omission, and accordingly take upon me to enclose a copy of them. You will, I presume, put them in cypher before they are sent off. To give you leisure to do it, I have not sent them to your house, but have ordered my servant to ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... that "he be forthwith bailed upon GOOD security." This "good security," surely, did not reach the sum mentioned by Wood, namely, 40,000; but it is likely that the author of the ATHENAE is ONLY wrong by a cypher, and that the amount fixed was 4000, as it has been already suggested. Thus Lovelace's confinement did not exceed seven weeks in duration, and the probability, is that the sole inconvenience, which he subsequently experienced, was the loss of ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... him, but nature makes all crooked lines, they seem to go forth in obedience to God, but they have a secret unseen reflexion into its own bosom. And this is the greatest act of enmity, to idolize God, and deify ourselves, we make him a cypher and sacrifice to ourselves his peculiar, incommunicable property of Alpha and Omega, that we do sacrilegiously attribute to ourselves, the beginning of our notions, and end of them too. This is the crooked ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... end of the Hall, above the throne, having been removed, a gigantic wooden framework was substituted, on which was erected a gorgeous piece of gas illumination. Above the mouldings of the windows, and over the City Arms, waved the Royal Standard and the Union Jack. Above was the Royal cypher, V.R., in very large characters, surmounted by the appropriate word "Welcome," the whole being encircled by an immense wreath of laurels, which terminated, at the lower extremity of the framework, with the rose, thistle and shamrock. Over the ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... The greatest heap of dirt in the world is Babylon! Where is Spain—Spain, that used to make Englishmen tremble? It is nothing; it does not count; it is not put as a cypher in the world's sum. What is Napoleon? Eh! what is Napoleon? The last of the Napoleons died under the hand of a savage when he was where he had no business to be, burning his lips with other folks' broth. The grandest bit of human nature in this world, a few years ago, was the Emperor ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... to start will carry a man far. Under the conditions of either war or peace, it is astonishing how many times all things come in balance for the man who is less fearful of rebuff than of being counted a cypher. One of Britain's great armored leaders, Lt. Gen. Sir Giffard Martel, digested the lesson of his whole life experience into this sentence: "If you take a chance, it usually succeeds, presupposing good judgment." Finally, it comes ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... province. Instead of being a vagrant, he has a place of residence; he is called the inhabitant of such a county, or of such a district, and for the first time in his life counts for something; for hitherto he has been a cypher. I only repeat what I have heard many say, and no wonder their hearts should glow, and be agitated with a multitude of feelings, not easy to describe. From nothing to start into being; from a servant to the rank of a master; from being the slave of some despotic prince, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... white bosom, and smother him with kisses: no, he could not bear it now, and almost lost his respect when he beheld it, and grew saucy unperceived. And it was in vain that he looked back upon the reward he had to stand for that necessary cypher a husband. In vain he considered the reasons why, and the occasion wherefore; he now seeks precedents of usurped dominion, and thinks she is his wife, and has forgot that he is her creature, and Philander's vassal. These thoughts disturbed him all the night, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... it now, himself, and stood stiff and straight at reading. "This is a cypher—code stuff! They know what it means, and we don't. 'Two-nineteen sharp'—I wonder what that means! This is the nineteenth day of the month, isn't it? 'Signal general satisfaction'—Lord! I'd give anything for ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... cypher, an obedient nobody,' Racksole replied, pinching her arm surreptitiously. 'Treat me as such. Use me as you like. I will go and look after my hotel' And ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... yet more. This letter, which is come to one of us in cypher, goes on to tell that it hath been heard, from a very good source, that the chief mover herein is to be made Duke and Peer of France, and receive 200,000 pistoles, for which he is to deliver up not Jersey only but Guernsey, Aurigny, and Serk. Nay, further, his Eminence ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... waylaid by a party of Lord Cobham's servants in the disguise of insurgents; his despatches were taken from him and sent to the chancellor, who found in the packet a letter of Noailles to the king in cypher, and a copy of Elizabeth's answer to the queen. Although in the latter there was no treason, yet it indicated a suspicious correspondence. The cypher, could it be read, might be expected to ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... obtaining her aunt's consent in due time, all her prejudices being in favour of the sea and sailors; and should she not, she would soon be her own mistress, and at liberty to dispose of herself and her pretty little fortune as she might choose. But a cypher as she was, in all questions of real moment, Mrs. Budd was not a person likely to throw any real obstacle in the way of the young people's wishes; the true grounds of whose present apprehensions were all to be ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... world. He addressed the envelope on the counter with the German name of a certain person living in Vienna. But Razumov knew that this, his first communication for Councillor Mikulin, would find its way to the Embassy there, be copied in cypher by somebody trustworthy, and sent on to its destination, all safe, along with the diplomatic correspondence. That was the arrangement contrived to cover up the track of the information from all unfaithful eyes, from all indiscretions, from all mishaps and treacheries. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... at the top a small engraving of three Fleurs de Lys between two oak branches, surmounted by a crown: at the bottom is another small engraving, with his cypher F. C. it was dated London, 17th July, 1792, 4th year ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss

... death of Mirabeau, the king adhered to the project with some modification; he wrote in cypher to the Marquis de Bouille at the end of April, to inform him that he should leave Paris almost immediately with his family in one carriage, which he had ordered to be built secretly and expressly for this purpose; and he also desired him to establish a line of posts from Chalons to Montmedy, the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... every case naturally written in cypher or secret code, in Hindustani written in English characters, and so on. They were rolled up into pellets and pressed into a small hole bored in a walking-stick, the hole being then plugged with clay or soap. Or they were put into the bowl of a pipe underneath the tobacco, and could thus be burnt ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell

... the mountains from the window of the room assigned to me, but nothing could atone for that lack of individuality which seemed to exhale from the establishment and its proprietors. It looked as though I were to be a cypher here. Half an hour was as much as I could endure. Issuing forth despite the heat, I captured a young fellow and bade him carry my bags whithersoever he pleased. He took me ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... Gilling. "I have more eyes than these, my boy! I've a particularly smart partner in London—name of Swallow—and he and I have a cypher code. So soon as the gentleman had left, I repaired to the nearest post office and wired a code message to Swallow. Swallow will meet that train when it strikes King's Cross. And it doesn't matter if Greyle hides himself in one of the spikes ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... was going on, the lad was receiving some definite teaching. He learned of course to read, to write, and to cypher. The elder Cato used to write in large characters for the benefit of his sons portions of history, probably composed by himself or by his contemporary Fabius, surnamed the "Painter" (the author of a chronicle of Italy from the landing ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church

... Military Telegraphs throughout the United States—a control that covered all the main lines in the country. He was subsequently commissioned colonel and aid-de-damp, and assigned to duty in the War Department, and was also placed in charge of the cypher correspondence of the Secretary of War. The cryptograph used throughout the war was perfected by him, and baffled all attempts of the enemy to translate it. At the close of the war he left the active military service of the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... not at all like her usual way, that they were a parcel of malicious young savages, and turned the whole respected body out of the room. Consequently it was entered in the Society's book (kept in astronomical cypher for fear of detection), that all communication with Jane was interdicted: and the President addressed the members on this convincing instance ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens

... eye to recognise the famous leader of the Cypher gang. For the Beard, who owed his name to an abnormal hairy development, was clean shaved; in addition, he wore a soft, greenish hat and was clad in a suit with ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain

... cherubims, festoons, volutas, fruit, leaves, car-touches, ensigns of fame, as swords and trumpets in saltier crosses, with chaplets of laurel, also books displayed, bishops' caps, the dean's arms, and, at the east end, the cypher of W.R. within a garter, on which are the words Honi soit qui mal y pense, and this within a fine compartment of palm-branches, and placed under an imperial crown, &c., all finely carved ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... wanted me to go to the Agricultural Bureau, and get him a paper of lettis seed. And Solomon Cypher wanted me to get him a new kind of string-beans, if I ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... constant requisition, and abundantly repay the cost of maintaining them. A guinea might be paid per hundred miles, for every five or six words, which, in matters of private concern, might, by pre-concert, be transmitted in cypher. Instead of sixty-four telegraphs, we might then require five hundred, and an establishment costing 100,000l. per annum; yet five hundred messages and replies per day, between different parts of the kingdom, taken at 2l. each, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... would be if he could pass in the latter for Constantine, and in the former for Babeuf! Watchwords are repeated, adhesion is declared, enthusiasm spreads from one to another, the Ecole Militaire draws his cypher with bayonets and pistol-barrels, Abbe Gaume and Cardinal Gousset applaud, his bust is crowned with flowers in the market, Nanterre dedicates rosebushes to him, social order is certainly saved, property, family, and religion breathe again, and the police erect a statue ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... the merchants of the Middle Ages, when he had once noted that from them we have gotten these words and so many others like them- 'alchemy,' 'alcohol,' 'alembic,' 'algebra,' 'alkali,' 'almanack,' 'azimuth,' 'cypher,' 'elixir,' 'magazine,' 'nadir,' 'tariff,' 'zenith,' 'zero '?—for if one or two of these were originally Greek, they reached us through the Arabic, and with tokens of their transit cleaving to them. In like manner, even though history were silent on the matter, we might ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... cypher, for I doubt whether mine is not rendered useless. I will write to you about ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... exclaimed, taking out the enclosed, and unfolding it with hands that shook, spite of herself, "and a fool for my pains, truly. I might have known she would baffle me—written in cypher, even to the name. Well, one thing is certain, that my witch and old General Harrington understand each other, that is something gained. If I had but time, now, to make out ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... while, unknown to himself, his faculties were developing. He read deeply. He had unconsciously grown to apply his darling's lucid reasoning to every detail of his judgment of life. It was as if it had before been written in cypher for him, and she had now given him the key. His mind was untiring in its efforts to master subjects, as his splendid physique seemed tireless in all manner ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... cypher'd stone. On which a sister's pensive eye shall muse In sorrow, and another relative In sweet, though mournful, recollection, bend, Shall call a tear into the stranger's eye Whene'er he hears the tale, yet make him proud That Britain's hospitable land should yield ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham

... how, by means of square tables, one letter followed by another letter will give the cypher letter. On the present page appears the square, which is shown in Plate 24, which enables us to answer the ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... he sot down again. Oh, the fearful excitement and confusion that rained down again! The president got up and tried to speak; the editor of the Auger talked wildly; Shakespeare Bobbet talked to himself incoherently, but Solomon Cypher's voice drowned 'em all out, as he kep' a-smitin' his breast and a hollerin' that he wasn't goin' to be infringed upon, or come in contract with ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... is of little service in a country where watches are reliable; but it formed part of the equipment of the North Polar expedition commanded by Captain Nares. Wheatstone's remarkable ingenuity was displayed in the invention of cyphers which have never been unravelled, and interpreting cypher manuscripts in the British Museum which had defied the experts. He devised a cryptograph or machine for turning a message into cypher which could only be interpreted by putting the cypher into a corresponding machine adjusted ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... this house is at stake, and to be asserted and preserved only by a vote in the negative. We hear it said, that this is a struggle for liberty, a manly resistance against the design to nullify the existence of this assembly, and to make it a cypher in the government; that the president and senate, the numerous meetings in the cities, and the influence of the general alarm of the country, are the agents and instruments of a scheme of coercion and ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... were now in Fort St. George 'so many married families,' they were sending out 'one Mr. Ralph Orde to be schoolmaster at the Fort ... who is to teach all the Children to read English and to write and Cypher gratis, and if any of the other Natives, as Portuguez, Gentues (Telugus),[4] or others will send their Children to School, we require they be also taught gratis ... and he is likewise to instruct them ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow

... consequently were light and of little value; others had rings, which were so much worn that they seemed to have descended through many generations; and one person had a silver-headed cane, marked with a kind of cypher, consisting of the Roman letters, V, O, C, and therefore probably a present from the Dutch East India Company, whose mark it is: They have also ornaments made of beads, which some wear round their necks as a solitaire, and others as bracelets, upon their wrists: ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... the tavern at Cypher's Lake now? In those old days it was not a very reputable place; it was said that many a man had there been fleeced at poker. The stage did not reach it on this snowy morning until ten o'clock. The driver stopped to water, the hospitable landlord, whose familiar nickname was ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... gardens lined with spectators, were so delightful, that when I came home from that vivid show, I thought Strawberry looked as dull and solitary as a hermitage. At night there was a ball at the Castle, and illuminations, with the Duke's cypher, &c. in coloured lamps, as were the houses of his Royal Highness's tradesmen. I went again in the evening to the French ladies on the Green, where there was a bonfire; but, you may believe, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... "l" being the rawi or binder). The student will find a new translation of it by Mr. J. W. Redhouse and Dr. Carlyle's old version (No. liii.) in Mr. Clouston's "Arabian Poetry." Muyid al-Din al-Hasan Abu Ismail nat. Ispahan ob. Baghdad A.H. 182) derived his surname from the Tughra, cypher or flourish (over the "Bismillah" in royal and official papers) containing the name of the prince. There is an older "Lamiyat al-Arab" a pre-Islamitic L-poem by the "brigand-poet" Shanfara, of whom Mr. W. G. Palgrave has given a most appreciative ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... all-powerful minister, and would not adopt the views of M. d'Orleans. This latter had proposed to dispute the passage of the Tanaro, a confluent of the Po, with the enemy, or compel them to accept battle. An intercepted letter, in cypher, from Prince Eugene to the Emperor, which fell into our hands, proved, subsequently, that this course would have been the right one to adopt; but the proof came too late; the decyphering table having been forgotten ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... assistant paymaster, weary of decoding cypher wireless messages from flotillas, patrols and sweepers spread far out over the leagues of sea lying between this port and the German coast, sat talking to the ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... in love with her husband; but, on the other hand, neither was she in love with Adrien Leroy. It simply added a zest to her otherwise monotonous round of amusements to imagine that she was; and it pleased her vanity to correspond in cypher, through the medium of the Morning Post, though every member of her set might have read the flippant messages if put in an open letter. There was a spice of intrigue, too, in the way in which she planned meetings at their mutual ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... gentleman, that I will not only abstain from publishing your discoveries—if you will make them known to me—but that I will promise and pledge my faith of a true Christian to set them down for my own use in cypher, so that after my death no one may be able to understand them. If you will believe this promise, believe it; if you will not, let us have done with the matter." "If I were not disposed to believe such oaths as these you now swear," said Tartaglia, "I might as well be set down ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... what have you done? You will know the interpretation of the reproach, your conscience holding the key of the cypher. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... quarter of an hour Dawson—his breakfast forgotten—had given Froissart his letters, sent a long telegram by special messenger to the Commander-in-Chief for despatch in code to Jacquetot. Not even to Dawson would the Admiralty entrust its private cypher. Then, as soon as Froissart had disappeared, he called up the Chief of the Dockyard on the telephone and arranged to come ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... still attachment to me?" "Sir," was the answer, "we do." "Will you give me your hands upon it as men of honour?" They did so. "Well," said the King, "I see you are the men I always took you to be; you shall know all my intentions. I can no longer remain here but as a cypher, or to be a prisoner to the Prince of Orange, and you know there is but a small distance between the prisons and the graves of kings. Therefore I go for France immediately; when there you shall have my instructions—you, ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... spies, intelligencers to entrap true subjects. He fears no libels, no treasons. His people speak what they think, and talk openly what they do in secret. They have nothing in their breasts that they need a cypher for. He is guarded ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... however, by continual profit and small expenses, he grew rich, and began to turn his thoughts towards rank. He hung the arms of the family over his parlour-chimney; pointed at a chariot decorated only with a cypher; became of opinion that money could not make a gentleman; resented the petulance of upstarts; told stories of alderman Puff's grandfather the porter; wondered that there was no better method for regulating precedence; wished for ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... paper like a dragoon charge, nor was once laid aside till both letter and address were finished. Just as he was sealing it, a note was brought to him by his servant—a slender, narrow, perfumed note, written on creamy paper, and adorned on the envelope with an elaborate cypher in gold and colors. Had I lived in the world of society for the last hundred seasons, I could not have interpreted the appearance of that ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... ther'teen/ /n.,v./ [Usenet: from 'rotate alphabet 13 places'] The simple Caesar-cypher encryption that replaces each English letter with the one 13 places forward or back along the alphabet, so that "The butler did it!" becomes "Gur ohgyre qvq vg!" Most Usenet news reading and posting programs include a rot13 feature. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... reading of the part is masterly, and we think correct. His Dunstan is not wholly sane; he believes himself inspired to read the alphabet of Heaven's stars, and to behold visions beyond the bounds of human foresight; one of the few to whom, 'and not in mercy, is it given to read the mixed celestial cypher: not in mercy, save as a penance merciful in issue.' His mischievous influence over the popular mind is sealed by the partial and latent degree of his insanity, for 'madness that doth least declare ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various

... you are going to London soon," said Hans, dropping the tutoyage and growing brutally severe, "to conquer new lovers and to wear more dresses? But there you will be of great use to me. Your instructions will be all ready in cypher by Tuesday night, when you must meet me at whatever point is convenient to ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... of wondrous amber hue form natural stairways, that grandly wrought were carved step after step, through successive epochs of erosion, affording thus an easy ascent to the rugged profile of this land of the Western Hemisphere. All this is of historic record in stony cypher of geology indelibly engraved by time on the rocky walls of deepest canyons, as traceable from the primordial archaean to our present era, ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... Stockdale Street was launched a three-penny "Special," to tell of the balloon "we" had seen and of the cannon "we" had heard. That was all. We put down our tickeys without a murmur. In the fulness of our hearts we said the paper had to live. The revenue from its advertising columns was a cypher, since there was so little to advertise about, and so little need to advertise anything that was about. The "ads." had fallen off only in the sense that they were no longer paid for. They were still printed (to fill up space); and very annoying reading they made. Before, there ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... Death which tore from me my wife set his seal at last on me, but before the summons was executed, I had made arrangements in every possible detail to communicate with my son. We agreed upon a cypher, and I have so imprinted each measure of our compact upon my memory that all of it is as clear to my mind as it was before I left the Earth. Give me possession of your great instruments, let me bridge the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... appeared to me in the light of prescience, but that was when I began to understand that all ideas, all reason and philosophy, are the result of outer impression. The primal language of our minds is in the concrete. Afterwards it becomes the cypher, and even at its highest it is expressed by angles, lines, and geometrical forms—substances and allusive shapes. But now, as the scene shifted by, I had involuntarily thrust forward my hands as did ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... I. charged his ambassador Bartholdi with the mission of procuring from the Emperor of Germany an acknowledgment of the regal dignity which he had just assumed. It is said that instructions written in cypher were sent to him, with particular directions that he should not apply on this subject to Father Wolff, the Emperor's confessor. The person who copied these instructions, however, happened to omit the word not in the copy in cypher. ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley

... was unconstitutional, and Mary Walker declared that no human being except Mrs Proudie would ever have been guilty of such cruelty. "Don't tell me about the bishop, John," she said, "the bishop is a cypher." "You may be sure Dr Tempest would not have a hand in it if it were not right," said John Walker. "My dear Mr John," said Miss Anne Prettyman, "Dr Tempest is as hard as a bar of iron, and always was. But I am surprised that Mr Robarts should take ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... only occasion upon which she ever seriously opposed Mazarin. With him expires all her political power. She is now as much a cypher as in the time of the late King, when France had only one master, the great Cardinal. He who is just dead, Fareham says, was but a little Richelieu; and he recalls how when the great Cardinal died people scarce dared tell one another of his death, so profound was ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... dark of a rich brown iris; and to a pure cerulean-tinted angle of whiteness streaked with the delicate shadows of long eyelashes. Was it that Tito's face attracted or repelled according to the mental attitude of the observer? Was it a cypher with more than one key? The strong, unmistakable expression in his whole air and person was a negative one, and it was perfectly veracious; it declared the absence of any uneasy claim, any restless vanity, and it made the admiration that followed him as he passed ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... on it in English, in a very foreign handwriting. The language, known to none in this house except the marabout, Maieddine, Saidee and Victoria, was as safe as a cypher, therefore ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... for really, the pawings, and kisses, and soft nonsense of such an old man are disgusting to me. Heigho! when we get to Boston, I must look out for a lover or two, to atone for the lamentable deficiencies of that withered cypher.' ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... don't think a man ought to tempt his little boy by defying him to fool his father. Well, I'll take a glass of your fifty cent cider and go," and soon the grocery man looked out the window and found somebody had added a cypher to the 'Sweet cider, only five cents a glass,' making it an expensive drink, considering it was made ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck



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