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
- A systematic collection of laws.
- A set of rules of conduct or procedure: a dress code.
- A system of signals or symbols used to send messages, often secretly; a cipher.
- Instructions for a computer; a program.
- (biology) The genetic code.
Verb
- To put into code.
- To write computer programs.
- (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
- ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
- ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
- ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
- ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
- ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
- ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
- ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ 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
- ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
- ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
- ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin