1

As an English author but long time resident of America, I recently wrote a historical spy thriller that delved deeply into coded messages. I often caught myself writing cipher and cypher. Although I eventually used cipher exclusively the plot was mainly located in England and France.

Would cypher have been a better choice?

Improve this question
4
  • 1
    Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.
    – Hot Licks
    Jun 4, 2016 at 3:03
  • 4
    Related: english.stackexchange.com/questions/147965/cipher-vs-cypher
    – DyingIsFun
    Jun 4, 2016 at 3:04
  • I would think that whether your readers were more likely to be North American or English, rather than the location might be the concern. Unless your characters are using the written word, in which case their culture would be the determinant.
    – MickeyfAgain_BeforeExitOfSO
    Jun 4, 2016 at 3:39
  • 1
    In Britain from 1919 to 1946, the organization was the Government code and cypher school. So it would seem difficult to avoid cypher entirely.
    – Phil Sweet
    Jun 4, 2016 at 3:55

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

This isn't strictly an "answer", but I thought you would be interested to see this pot-pourri of spellings of cipher/cypher from the 16th century onwards. It is from sense 5 of the word cipher/cypher in the Oxford English Dictionary. Of course the word began life from the French cuffre (modern French chiffre) with an entirely different meaning (the figure, nought) in the 14th century.

5a. A secret or disguised manner of writing, whether by characters arbitrarily invented (app. the earlier method), or by an arbitrary use of letters or characters in other than their ordinary sense, by making single words stand for sentences or phrases, or by other conventional methods intelligible only to those possessing the key; a cryptograph. Also anything written in cipher, and the key to such a system.

1528 S. Gardiner in N. Pocock Rec. Reformation I. No. 48. 92 We think not convenient to write them, but only in cipher.

1587 A. Fleming et al. Holinshed's Chron. (new ed.) III. Contin. 1371/1 Letters betweene them were alwaies written in cipher.

1605 Bacon Of Aduancem. Learning ii. sig. Qq, The kindes of Cyphars..are many, according to the Nature or Rule of the infoulding: Wheele-Cyphars, Kay-Cyphars, Dovbles, &c.

1652 J. Evelyn Mem. (1857) I. 289, I had also addresses and cyphers, to correspond with his Majesty and Ministers abroad.

1749 D. Hartley Observ. Man i. i. 15 We admit the Key of a Cypher to be a true one, when it explains the Cypher completely.

1812 Duke of Wellington Dispatches (1838) IX. 235 We have deciphered the letter you sent and it goes back to you with the key of the cipher.

1837 A. Alison Hist. Europe VI. xlix. 508 Intercepting of some of the correspondence in cipher.

1885 Gordon in Standard 24 Feb. Cypher letter..which I cannot decypher, for Colonel Stewart took the cypher with him.

Improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.