chiffre

See also: Chiffre and chiffré

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French chiffre. Doublet of cipher and zero.

Noun

chiffre (plural chiffres)

1. (music) A figure or motif (short melodic or lyrical passage that is repeated).
   • 2014, Peter Wegele, Max Steiner: Composing, Casablanca, and the Golden Age of Film Music:

     At the end of the eighteenth century, French opera composers like A. E. Grétry (Richard Coeur de Lion, 1784), L. Cherubini (Medeé, 1797), and J. Fr. Le Cueur (Ossian ou les Bardes, 1804) began to “assign musical chiffres to precise dramatic situations or single figures on the stage, which were played again when these figures appeared again,” according to Bern University professor Anselm Gerhard.

French

Etymology

From Medieval Latin cifra (“zero”), from Andalusian Arabic صِفر (ṣifr, “empty”). Doublet of zéro.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʃifʁ/

• Audio; “un chiffre”:

  (file)

Noun

chiffre m (plural chiffres)

1. a digit i.e. 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
2. (colloquial or dated) a number
3. figure (number)
4. cipher (method of transforming a text to conceal meaning)
5. cipher (code)
6. (music) figure
7. monogram

Derived terms

• chiffrable
• chiffrage
• chiffre arabe
• chiffre d’affaires
• chiffre romain
• chiffrement
• chiffrer
• déchiffrer

 

Descendants

• → German: Chiffre
  • → Czech: šifra, cifra
• → Ottoman Turkish: شیفره (şifre)
  • Turkish: şifre
• → Polish: szyfr
• → Russian: шифр (šifr)
• → Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic script: ши̏фра, ци̏фра

  Latin script: šȉfra, cȉfra

See also

• nombre
• numéro

Further reading

• “chiffre”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Old French

Alternative forms

• chifre
• ciffre
• cifre
• cyffre
• cyfre

Noun

chiffre oblique singular, m (oblique plural chiffres, nominative singular chiffres, nominative plural chiffre)

1. number; digit

Descendants

• French: chiffre
  • → German: Chiffre
    • → Czech: šifra, cifra
  • → Ottoman Turkish: شیفره (şifre)
    • Turkish: şifre
  • → Polish: szyfr
  • → Russian: шифр (šifr)
  • → Serbo-Croatian:

    Cyrillic script: ши̏фра, ци̏фра

    Latin script: šȉfra, cȉfra

• → Middle English: cifre, cyffre, siphre, sypher, syphyr
  • English: cipher, cypher

References

• Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX^e au XV^e siècle (1881) (chiffre)