chiffre
See also: Chiffre and chiffré
English
Etymology
Borrowed from French chiffre. Doublet of cipher and zero.
Noun
chiffre (plural chiffres)
- (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.
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French
Etymology
From Medieval Latin cifra (“zero”), from Andalusian Arabic صِفر (ṣifr, “empty”). Doublet of zéro.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ʃifʁ/
audio (file)
Noun
chiffre m (plural chiffres)
- a digit i.e. 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
- (colloquial or dated) a number
- figure (number)
- cipher (method of transforming a text to conceal meaning)
- cipher (code)
- (music) figure
- monogram
Derived terms
- chiffrable
- chiffrage
- chiffre arabe
- chiffre d'affaires
- chiffrement
- chiffrer
- chiffre romain
- déchiffrer
Descendants
- → German: Chiffre
- → Czech: šifra, cifra
- → Ottoman Turkish: شیفره (şifre)
- Turkish: şifre
- → Polish: szyfr
- → Russian: шифр (šifr)
- → Serbo-Croatian: šȉfra/ши̏фра, cȉfra/ци̏фра
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 m (oblique plural chiffres, nominative singular chiffres, nominative plural chiffre)
- number; digit
Descendants
- French: chiffre
- → German: Chiffre
- → Czech: šifra, cifra
- → Ottoman Turkish: شیفره (şifre)
- Turkish: şifre
- → Polish: szyfr
- → Russian: шифр (šifr)
- → Serbo-Croatian: šȉfra/ши̏фра, cȉfra/ци̏фра
- → German: Chiffre
- → Middle English: cifre, siphre, syphyr, sypher, cyffre
- English: cipher, cypher
References
- Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (1881) (chiffre)