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chiffre. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
chiffre, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
chiffre in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
chiffre you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
Borrowed from French chiffre. Doublet of cipher and zero.
Noun
chiffre (plural chiffres)
- (music) A figure or motif (short melodic or lyrical passage that is repeated).
2014, Peter Wegele, Max Steiner: Composing, Casablanca, and the Golden Age of Film Music:At the end of the eighteenth century, French opera composers like A. E. Grétry (Richard Coeur de Lion, 1784), L. Cherubini (Medeé, 1797), and J. Fr. Le Cueur (Ossian ou les Bardes, 1804) began to “assign musical chiffres to precise dramatic situations or single figures on the stage, which were played again when these figures appeared again,” according to Bern University professor Anselm Gerhard.
French
Etymology
From Medieval Latin cifra (“zero”), from Andalusian Arabic صِفر (ṣifr, “empty”). Doublet of zéro.
Pronunciation
Noun
chiffre m (plural chiffres)
- a digit i.e. 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
- (colloquial or dated) a number
- figure (number)
- cipher (method of transforming a text to conceal meaning)
- cipher (code)
- (music) figure
- monogram
Derived terms
Descendants
See also
Further reading
Old French
Alternative forms
Noun
chiffre oblique singular, m (oblique plural chiffres, nominative singular chiffres, nominative plural chiffre)
- number; digit
Descendants
References
- Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (1881) (chiffre)