a system of words, symbols, or signals used to send secret or specialized messages
The treasure map was written in a strange code.
During the war, soldiers used a radio code that the enemy could not break.
✦ From Latin “codex” meaning a book of laws or tablets, later generalized to any set of rules or symbols.
an official set of rules or standards that people must follow
The building code requires every house to have smoke alarms.
Drivers must follow the highway code to stay safe.
✦ Sense extended from earlier meaning of “book of laws” in the 14th century to any organized set of rules.
the written instructions in a programming language that tell a computer what to do
She spent the night fixing the code for her new game.
When the code was wrong, the website crashed.
✦ Adopted in the mid-20th century when computers began to require symbolic instructions, extending the older sense of ‘code’ as a system of symbols.
to write instructions in a programming language for a computer
I learned to code my first website in high school.
The team will code a new feature this week.
✦ Verb use emerged in the 1960s alongside the rise of software development, from the noun “code” in the computing sense.
to change information into symbols or numbers, especially to keep it secret or make it shorter
The device codes the message before sending it.
Scientists coded the data so it could be read by the machine.
✦ Based on earlier sense of ‘cipher’, influenced by the rise of electronic communication in the 20th century.
