Code
name, noun, verb, slang ·Very common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 A short textual designation, often with little relation to the item it represents. countable, uncountable
"This flavour of soup has been assigned the code WRT-9."
- 2 Alternative form of cod. alt-of, alternative
- 3 a coding system used for transmitting messages requiring brevity or secrecy wordnet
- 4 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. countable, uncountable
"the mild and impartial spirit which pervades the Code compiled under Canute"
- 5 (computer science) the symbolic arrangement of data or instructions in a computer program or the set of such instructions wordnet
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- 6 Any system of principles, rules or regulations relating to one subject. countable, uncountable
"The medical code is a system of rules for the regulation of the professional conduct of physicians."
- 7 a set of rules or principles or laws (especially written ones) wordnet
- 8 A set of rules for converting information into another form or representation. countable, uncountable
- 9 a series of letters, numbers or symbols assigned to something for the purpose of classification or identification wordnet
- 10 A set of rules for converting information into another form or representation.; By synecdoche: a codeword, code point, an encoded representation of a character, symbol, or other entity. countable, uncountable
"The ASCII code of "A" is 65."
- 11 A message represented by rules intended to conceal its meaning. countable, uncountable
"[Isaac Newton] was obsessed with alchemy. He spent hours copying alchemical recipes and trying to replicate them in his laboratory. He believed that the Bible contained numerological codes."
- 12 A cryptographic system using a codebook that converts words or phrases into codewords. countable, uncountable
- 13 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. uncountable
"Object-oriented C++ code is easier to understand for a human than C code."
- 14 A program. countable, uncountable
- 15 A particular lect or language variety. countable, uncountable
- 16 An emergency requiring situation-trained members of the staff. countable, uncountable
- 17 A set of unwritten rules that bind a social group. countable, informal, uncountable
"girl code"
- 1 To write software programs.
"I learned to code on an early home computer in the 1980s."
- 2 convert ordinary language into code wordnet
- 3 To add codes to (a data set). transitive
"The resulting citation collection was databased and coded for meaning, etymon, and date range (earliest and latest occurrence found)."
- 4 attach a code to wordnet
- 5 To categorise by assigning identifiers from a schedule, for example CPT coding for medical insurance purposes.
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- 6 To encode.
"We should code the messages we send out on Usenet."
- 7 To encode a protein. intransitive
- 8 To call a hospital emergency code. informal
"coding in the CT scanner"
- 9 Of a patient, to suffer a sudden medical emergency (a code blue) such as cardiac arrest. informal
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"Frank left a message by means of a secret code."
Etymology
From Middle English code (“system of law”), from Old French code (“system of law”), from Latin cōdex, 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.”). Doublet of codex. Verb etymology 1 sense 7 is an ellipsis of code blue (“medical emergency”).
Related phrases
More for "code"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.