How to Use cipher in a Sentence

cipher

noun
  • She was nothing more than a cipher.
  • The venue that was completed in late 2019 is a cipher to Ganong and the rest of the Olympians.
    Nathan Fenno, Los Angeles Times, 4 Feb. 2022
  • The pages on the left (verso) were written in a cipher.
    Nikhil Krishnan, The New Yorker, 9 May 2022
  • On the other hand, them being ciphers is kind of the point.
    Todd Vanderwerff, Vox, 18 June 2018
  • But while Josh and Saul are singing ciphers, Owen and Manus are complex and whole.
    Sara Holdren, Vulture, 8 Nov. 2023
  • Block ciphers go back to the 1850s and are the core of most modern encryption schemes.
    George Musser, Quanta Magazine, 6 June 2023
  • On the page, its words can seem as blunt and cipher-like as notes on a musical staff.
    Ben Brantley, New York Times, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Back at the Anomaly Stone, Gabriel and his cipher crew are working.
    Dalene Rovenstine, EW.com, 2 July 2020
  • But for many artists, the queen was more cipher than an enemy.
    Los Angeles Times, 12 Sep. 2022
  • Most frustrating of all is the show’s saintly cipher of a hero.
    Judy Berman, Time, 4 June 2021
  • The show shifts from standing circle to ascending rows of chairs, then back to the cipher.
    Dasun Imanuel, Essence, 28 Aug. 2019
  • And there was this woman at its center who was always a bit of a cipher, hard to pin down.
    Jessica Ferri, Los Angeles Times, 11 Sep. 2023
  • Mike serves as a kind of cipher for this coming-of-age realization in the show.
    Leah Beckmann, The Cut, 21 June 2018
  • Jules is a cipher, which is kind of the point of the series, but makes her a boring and at times annoying anchor for the show.
    Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 15 Nov. 2019
  • Evan, who had been a social cipher at school, is noticed.
    Bill Goodykoontz, Detroit Free Press, 24 Sep. 2021
  • And Elvis himself remains a cipher, a symbol, more myth than flesh and blood.
    New York Times, 23 June 2022
  • This is the second time a Zodiac cipher has been cracked.
    Kevin Fagan, SFChronicle.com, 11 Dec. 2020
  • The landlady remains a cipher, and yet a faint aspect of loss haloes her.
    Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 21 Aug. 2019
  • For one thing, the pair told her, the final passage uses a layered cipher.
    Theresa MacHemer, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Jan. 2020
  • Just over a decade later, Saif al-Islam is now something of a cipher for Libyans.
    Reuters, CNN, 14 Nov. 2021
  • Unless perhaps the point was to expose the actor as cipher.
    Los Angeles Times, 12 Oct. 2021
  • And the show has been (lightly) criticized for turning Budd in to something of a cipher.
    Chloe Schama, Vogue, 24 Oct. 2018
  • Now and then someone at the edge of the cipher would cut in, and there would be a trio for a minute, weaving like birds finding the right formation to slice the sky.
    New York Times, 15 Sep. 2021
  • Don't ask me, but some online sleuths have already managed to figure out the cipher in the image.
    Evan Romano, Men's Health, 7 Mar. 2022
  • Some of the plans these cipher administrators came up with are the stuff of nightmares.
    Ed Burmila, The New Republic, 13 June 2019
  • Ford’s son Jack received gold cufflinks showing the crown along with her cipher.
    Maureen Groppe, USA TODAY, 18 Sep. 2022
  • The cipher was sent two weeks after a person claiming to be the Zodiac Killer called into the show.
    Leah Asmelash and Cheri Mossburg, CNN, 11 Dec. 2020
  • The cipher is a lovely hybrid of the letters M and H written in blue ink with a crown hovering above.
    Erica Gonzales, Harper's BAZAAR, 31 July 2018
  • All of the chairs to be used in the ceremony have been updated with King Charles and Queen Camilla's ciphers.
    Alexis Jones, Peoplemag, 30 Apr. 2023
  • His rap name is in part a reference to roaming through the New York streets looking for ciphers and battles to hone his skills.
    Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 29 Sep. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cipher.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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