• Code

    Pronunciation

    • Rhymes: -əʊd

    Origin

    From Old French code ("system of law"), from Latin codex, 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.").

    Full definition of code

    Noun

    code

    (plural codes)
    1. A short symbol, often with little relation to the item it represents.This flavour of soup has been assigned the code WRT-9.
    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."The collection of laws made by the order of Justinian is sometimes called, by way of eminence, "The Code"." -Wharton
    3. Any system of principles, rules or regulations relating to one subject; as, the medical code, a system of rules for the regulation of the professional conduct of physicians; the naval code, a system of rules for making communications at sea means of signals.
    4. A set of rules for converting information into another form or representation.
      1. By synecdoche: a code word, code point, an encoded representation of a character, symbol, or other entity.The ASCII code of "A" is 65.
    5. (cryptography) A cryptographic system using a codebook that converts words or phrases into codewords.
    6. (programming, uncountable) 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.Object-oriented C++ code is easier to understand for a human than C code.I wrote some code to reformat text documents.
      1. By synecdoche: any piece of a program, of a document or something else written in a computer language.This HTML code may be placed on your web page.

    Derived terms

    Related terms

    Verb

    1. (computing) To write software programs.I learned to code on an early home computer in the 1980s.
    2. To categorise by assigning identifiers from a schedule, for example CPT coding for medical insurance purposes.
    3. (cryptography) To encode.We should code the messages we sent out on Usenet.
    4. (medicine) Of a patient, to suffer a sudden medical emergency such as cardiac arrest.
    5. (genetics, intransitive) To encode a protein.

    Derived terms

    Anagrams

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