Dictionaries › English

code

Pronunciation: /kəʊd/

The English word “code” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A short textual designation, often with little relation to the item it represents.
  2. A body of law, sanctioned by legislation, in which the rules of law to be specifically applied by the courts are set forth in systematic form; a compilation of laws by public authority; a digest.
  3. Any system of principles, rules or regulations relating to one subject.
  4. A set of rules for converting information into another form or representation.
  5. A codeword, code point, an encoded representation of a character, symbol, or other entity.
  6. A message represented by rules intended to conceal its meaning.
  7. A cryptographic system using a codebook that converts words or phrases into codewords.
  8. Instructions for a computer, written in a programming language; the input of a translator, an interpreter or a browser, namely: source code, machine code, bytecode.
  9. A program.
  10. A particular lect or language variety.
  11. An emergency requiring situation-trained members of the staff.
  12. A set of unwritten rules that bind a social group.
  13. A sport or league of a specific type of football, such as rugby league or the NRL

verb

  1. To write software programs.
  2. To add codes to (a data set).
  3. To categorise by assigning identifiers from a schedule, for example CPT coding for medical insurance purposes.
  4. To encode.
  5. To encode a protein.
  6. To call a hospital emergency code.
  7. Of a patient, to suffer a sudden medical emergency (a code blue) such as cardiac arrest.

Etymology

From Middle English code (“system of law”), from Old French code (“system of law”), from Latin cōdex, later form of caudex (“the stock or stem of a tree, a board or tablet of wood smeared over with wax, on which the ancients originally wrote; hence, a book, a writing.”). Doublet of codex. Verb etymology 1, verb sense 7 is an ellipsis of code blue (“medical emergency”).

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “code” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.