In order to fully understand the term decipher that we are now dealing with, it is necessary to start with its etymological origin. In this case, we can state that it comes from French, exactly from the word “déchiffrer”, which is the result of the sum of two components:
-The prefix “des-”, which is used to indicate negation.
-The verb “chiffrer”, which can be translated as “to encrypt”.
The verb decipher refers to the action of discovering the content that is written in unknown characters or codes. The message in question is unintelligible until someone manages to decipher it. The concept of deciphering is also used with respect to clarifying what is difficult to understand. See Abbreviation Finder for acronyms related to Decipher.
For example: “Investigators try to decipher manuscript found at crime scene”, “Government will force utility companies to issue bills that are easy to decipher”, “Detective, when do you think you will be able to crack the riddle? ” .
The idea of deciphering is often confused with the notion of decoding or decoding. Deciphering something involves resorting to various techniques to interpret the information that is expressed through an unknown code. Decoding, on the other hand, consists of applying rules for the interpretation of a known code.
The Rosetta Stone is an example of a text that could be deciphered. This stela, created in 196 BC, features a decree combining Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script, and ancient Greek.
The hieroglyphic and cuneiform writings of the Maya, Olmec, Hittite, and other peoples have been deciphered through the research of linguists and philologists such as Georg Friedrich Grotefend, Jean-François Champollion, and Yuri Knórozov.
Precisely the work of these people has allowed hieroglyphs to be deciphered. And that leads us to know today curiosities to read such as that the drawing of a duck means “son”, that the drawing of a cane means “cane” or that three lines together vertically are used to indicate the plural of a word.
These researchers also deciphered and discovered other curiosities such as the following:
-The hieroglyphics can be read in any direction, although the direction of the figures that appear are those that determine the meaning of the reading in each one of them.
-To know what function a word performs, you only have to look at the sign that comes to highlight its semantic work.
-The Egyptian alphabet has 28 consonants and no vowels.
In colloquial language, deciphering is related to understanding something of complex understanding, either due to its characteristics or an intention of concealment: “The prosecutor seeks to decipher the complex network set up to launder money”, “I am trying to decipher what the doctor wrote in this recipe”, “The methodology for building the pyramids is a mystery that science has not yet been able to decipher”.
In the same way, the term decipher is also used colloquially to carry out what is the attempt to find the solution to a riddle, such as: “What is it that you can find once in a minute, twice in a minute?” moment and not once in a hundred years?”
