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Literary notes about cipher (AI summary)

The term “cipher” in literature is a multifaceted word that can imply a secret code, a method of encryption, or even denote insignificance. In some works, it functions as a noun to describe a secret telegram or dispatch that requires decoding ([1], [2], [3], [4]), while in others it is used as a verb meaning to work out a solution or to decipher meaning from a cryptic arrangement ([5], [6], [7]). Moreover, “cipher” is sometimes employed metaphorically to signify a person or thing that is considered null or unimportant ([8], [9], [10]). Its varied usage extends further into contexts where it refers to fundamental skills such as reading, writing, and performing arithmetic operations ([11], [12]), reinforcing its image as both a literal and figurative tool in narrative constructions.
  1. You never explained that cipher telegram about the sausages and ham."
    — from Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
  2. “Yes, sir, a cipher telegram has been despatched.”
    — from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
  3. Now came an aide from General Gillmore, at Port Royal, with your cipher-dispatch from Midway, so I steamed down to Port Royal to see him.
    — from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. Sherman
  4. Bernstein had written a crypto tutorial that contained computer code that could be used to make a cipher stronger than DES-56.
    — from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
  5. The duke says: “Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we want to.
    — from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  6. At last he got to comin’ down in the shaft, hisself, to try to cipher it out.
    — from Roughing It by Mark Twain
  7. “Every time a woman wants to do well by her darling, she puzzles her brain to cipher out some scheme for getting it into my hands.
    — from Roughing It by Mark Twain
  8. — N. zero, nothing; null, nul, naught, nought, void; cipher, goose egg; none, nobody, no one; nichts[Ger.], nixie*, nix*; zilch, zip, zippo
    — from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget
  9. But as for me, I had gone quite beyond all lapse of time, and had become a cipher and a nothing.
    — from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. Andersen
  10. He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher—in a word, a poor thing in every way.
    — from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
  11. He went to school at the age of forty, and learned to read, to write, to cipher.
    — from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  12. The new Testament and the speller were Cornelius Vanderbilt's only books at school, but he learned to read, write, and cipher a little.
    — from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

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