cryptography

noun cryp·tog·ra·phy \ krip-ˈtä-grə-fē \

Definition of cryptography

1 : secret writing

2 : the enciphering and deciphering of messages in secret code or cipher; also : the computerized encoding and decoding of information

3 : cryptanalysis

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Examples of cryptography in a Sentence

Companies often use cryptography to protect private information.

Recent Examples of cryptography from the Web

They are secured by cryptography, the computerized encoding and decoding of data.

— Fortune, "Cryptocurrency Exchanges Are Increasingly Roiled by Hackings and Chaos," 29 Sep. 2017
Mundy doesn’t entirely succeed in deciphering the extraordinary complexity of codes and cryptography for layperson readers.

— randy dotinga, The Christian Science Monitor, "'Code Girls' tells the captivating story of America's female World War II codebreakers," 13 Oct. 2017
Friedman's team was working to break the Japanese diplomatic cryptography machine dubbed Purple.

— maya wei-haas, Smithsonian, "How the Women Codebreakers of WWII Helped Win the War," 5 Oct. 2017
The transmission of such keys is crucial to quantum cryptography.

— The Economist, "Keeping telecommunications secretThe first quantum-cryptographic satellite network will be Chinese," 31 Aug. 2017
Heartbleed, discovered in the OpenSSL cryptography library, affected roughly 500,000, or 17%, of the web’s trusted secure servers.

— jeff stone, WSJ, "Vetting Code Libraries, Not Just Kaspersky, Will Improve Security," 22 Aug. 2017
The Enigma machine is the most storied cryptography device in modern history.

— jason daley, Smithsonian, "WWII Enigma Machine Found at Flea Market Sells for $51,000," 14 July 2017
While highly theoretical, her work had implications for quantum field theory and theoretical physics as well as engineering, prime numbers and cryptography.

— jason daley, Smithsonian, "Remembering the Brilliant Maryam Mirzakhani, the Only Woman to Win a Fields Medal," 18 July 2017
Her work is already widely influential in mathematics, with possible future use in engineering, cryptography and theoretical physics, including studies of the origin of the universe.

— matt schudel, Washington Post, "Maryam Mirzakhani, first woman to win Fields Medal in mathematics, dies at 40," 15 July 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'cryptography.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

For a word having to do with secrets, "cryptography" has a surprisingly transparent etymology. The word traces back to the Greek roots kryptos, meaning "hidden," and graphein, meaning "to write." "Kryptos" - which in turn traces to the Greek verb kryptein, meaning "to hide" - is a root shared by several English words, including "crypt," "cryptic," and "encrypt." "Krypton," the name of a colorless gaseous element used especially in some fluorescent lamps and photography flashes, also comes from "kryptos." The name was chosen because the gas is rare and hard to find.