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.
- You never explained that cipher telegram about the sausages and ham."
— from Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse - “Yes, sir, a cipher telegram has been despatched.”
— from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle - 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 - 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 - 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 - At last he got to comin’ down in the shaft, hisself, to try to cipher it out.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain - “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 - — 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 - 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 - He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher—in a word, a poor thing in every way.
— from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert - He went to school at the age of forty, and learned to read, to write, to cipher.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - 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