code

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /kəʊd/, US /koʊd/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English code, borrowed from Old French code (“system of laws, law-book”),^[2][3][4] from Latin cōdex (“a book; a code of laws”),^[2][5] a later spelling of caudex (“tree trunk; a block split into tablets for writing”).^[3][6][7] The book was first made of wooden tablets covered with wax.^[2][7] Barnhart and Merriam-Webster relate it to Latin cūdere (“to beat”),^[3][7] and Etymonline reports de Vaan's derivation through Proto-Italic *kaud-ek- from PIE *kehu-d- “cleaved, separate”.^[2] Latin codex itself was used in English from the 16th to the 18th century for a code of laws, but now means only a manuscript volume.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

One of the systematic collections of statutes made for the later Roman emperors, especially Justinian's: 1303,^[9][10] in Mannyng's Handlyng Synne.^[3]

Semantic evolution

A digest of a country's laws is from 1735,^[9] and a set of rules on any subject from 1809.^[9] The sense “system of secret writing, cipher” is from 1808, in a dispatch of Wellington's,^[3][2][9] and Word Origins connects it with the navy's use of flags for signals.^[11] Code-name is from 1879, in telegraphy.^[2] A system of symbols for expressing information, as in a computer, is from 1946,^[9][2] and extended uses in biology, such as the genetic code, from 1958.^[9] The verb, “to put into code”, is from 1815;^[2][7] “to put into computer code” is from 1947, and the intransitive “to write computer code” by 1987.^[2] In American hospital slang, to code is to go into cardiac arrest.^[12]

Timeline

• 1303 – a Roman legal code.^[9][3]
• 1735 – a digest of a country's laws.^[9]
• 1808 – a cipher.^[3][9]
• 1809 – a set of rules.^[9]
• 1815 – verb, to put into code.^[2][7]
• 1879 – code-name.^[2]
• 1946 – computer code.^[9][2]
• 1958 – the genetic code.^[9]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A systematic collection of laws.
2. A set of rules of conduct or procedure: a dress code.
3. A system of signals or symbols used to send messages, often secretly; a cipher.
4. Instructions for a computer; a program.
5. (biology) The genetic code.

Verb

1. To put into code.
2. To write computer programs.
3. (biology) To specify the genetic code for something.

Word family

• codeless
• codable
• coder
• BCD
• decode
• encode
• recode

Related words

• codex
• codify
• codification
• codicil
• coda

Usage notes

The OED records two unrelated obsolete nouns spelled code: “pitch, cobbler's wax”, from 1358, and “a chrism-cloth”, from about 1420.^[9]

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin