Cypher

Word of the day: cypher

Context: He counts votes and secures them, and he uses the rulebook to achieve narrow victories, but when it come to policy-the substances of legislation-he's a cypher whose only real guidestar seem to be the maintenance of political power.

Source: Reason, February 2019, p10, The McConnell Era Has Been Terrible For American Politics, by Peter Suderman.

Cypher:  ci·pher [ˈsīfər] NOUN cypher (noun) a secret or disguised way of writing; a code. "He was writing cryptic notes in a cipher" · [more] synonyms: code · secret writing · coded message · cryptograph · cryptogram dated a zero; a figure 0. synonyms: zero · nought · nil · 0 · naught a monogram. synonyms: numeral · number · integer · figure · digit · character · symbol · sign.
A person or thing of no value or importance; nonentity.
VERB cypher (verb) put (a message) into secret writing; encode. archaic do arithmetic.

Comment: I would have know the word in context of writing in secret code.  In this context I did not recognize the word and I did not know the definition of the word as a person of no importance or a nonentity. Now I do.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Spenglerian

Spenglerian: Spen·​gle·​ri·​an | \ ˌshpeŋ-ˈglir-ē-ən  , ˌspeŋ-, -ˈlir- \ adjective: of or relating to the theory of world history developed by Oswald Spengler which holds that all major cultures undergo similar cyclical developments from birth to maturity to decay Context: Murray is not putting forward a Spengleria thesis that the collapse of the West is inevitable or that..... Reviling the West by Peter W. Wood, National Review , May 30, 2022, p34.
Read more

Schrödinger's cat

Schrödinger’s cat is a famous physics thought experiment, which presents a paradox in which a cat in a box is somehow simultaneously both alive and dead. Wikipedia: In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment that illustrates a paradox of quantum superposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.  This thought experiment was devised by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935,[1] in a discussion with Albert Einstein,[2] to illustrate what Schrödinger saw as the problems of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. ( link ) Context: "A few weeks passed, then a few more; 34 weeks on, the JCPOA looks like Schrodinger's cat, not quite alive or dead."  An unenriching debate,  The Economist . September 10, 2022, p51
Read more

Thucydides Trap

Thucydides Trap , also referred to as Thucydides's Trap, is a term popularized by American political scientist Graham T. Allison to describe an apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as a regional or international hegemon. It was coined and is primarily used to describe a potential conflict between the United States and the People's Republic of China. The term is based on a quotation of ancient Athenian historian and military general Thucydides, in which he posited that the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta had been inevitable because of Spartan fears of the growth of Athenian power. link , link .  Context: We were aware of Russia, but we tended to regard it as the little yapping dog to China’s larger and more patient beast. I can mumble the arguments in my sleep: Russia’s economy is the size of Italy’s; it has one tenth the population of China; its aggression is really just desperation by Putin; haven’t you...
Read more