DECIPHER • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Decipher

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/dɪsˈaɪfər/ Listen

verb

Decipher v. t. (past & past part. deciphered; pres. part. deciphering)

To translate from secret characters or ciphers into intelligible terms; as, to decipher a letter written in secret characters.

To find out, so as to be able to make known the meaning of; to make out or read, as words badly written or partly obliterated; to detect; to reveal; to unfold.

To stamp; to detect; to discover. (R.) "You are both deciphered,... For villains."

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Etymology of 'Decipher'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Decipher" Quotes from Famous Books

... an important find. Although much plundered, the walls were intact, and the delicate carvings in the white limestone walls were exceptional examples. And there were some very interesting things to decipher. A scholar and an explorer could ...

— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... too. Love-letters of the passing year, she called them; songs dyed with the autumn's heart's-blood of regret that he must yield the sweet, warm earth to his gray rival, winter. She had pretended that the small, crossed veinlets of the leaves were Chinese ideographs which it was given her to decipher. Holding him off with one outstretched arm she would have read to him,—fantastic, exquisite interpreter of love,—but he, mad brute, had caught the little hands, the autumn leaves, and crushed them to one hot glow, crying aloud that ...

— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... in Rabelais' own hand; afterwards that it might be at least a copy of his unfinished work. The task was a difficult one, for the writing, extremely flowing and rapid, is execrable, and most difficult to decipher and to transcribe accurately. Besides, it often happens in the sixteenth and the end of the fifteenth century, that manuscripts are much less correct than the printed versions, even when they have not been copied by clumsy ...

— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... handwriting points to an early period of Leonardo's life. It has become very indistinct, and is at present exceedingly difficult to decipher. Some passages ...

— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... few of the passes used by Harriet throughout the war. Many others are so defaced that it is impossible to decipher them. ...

— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford

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