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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

code.

A short textual designation, often with little relation to the item it represents.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/kəʊd/Received-Pronunciation/koʊd/General-American
  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. 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
  3. 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.
    The naval code is a system of rules for making communications at sea by means of signals.
  4. A set of rules for converting information into another form or representation.

    countable · uncountable
  5. A set of rules for converting information into another form or representation. A codeword, code point, an encoded representation of a character, symbol, or other entity.

    countable · synecdoche · uncountable
    The ASCII code of "A" is 65.
  6. A message represented by rules intended to conceal its meaning.

    countable · uncountable
  7. A cryptographic system using a codebook that converts words or phrases into codewords.

    countable · uncountable
  8. 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.
    I wrote some code to reformat text documents.
  9. A program.

    countable · uncountable
  10. A particular lect or language variety.

    countable · uncountable
  11. An emergency requiring situation-trained members of the staff.

    countable · uncountable
  12. A set of unwritten rules that bind a social group.

    countable · informal · uncountable
    girl code
  13. A sport or league of a specific type of football, such as rugby league or the NRL

    Australia · countable · metonymically · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Latin caudex Latin cōdex Old French codebor. Middle English code English code 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, verb sense 7 is an ellipsis of code blue (“medical emergency”).

verb/kəʊd/Received-Pronunciation/koʊd/General-American
  1. To write software programs.

    I learned to code on an early home computer in the 1980s.
  2. To add codes to (a data set).

    transitive
  3. To categorise by assigning identifiers from a schedule, for example CPT coding for medical insurance purposes.

  4. To encode.

    We should code the messages we send out on Usenet.
  5. To encode a protein.

    intransitive
  6. To call a hospital emergency code.

    informal
    coding in the CT scanner
  7. Of a patient, to suffer a sudden medical emergency (a code blue) such as cardiac arrest.

    informal
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Latin caudex Latin cōdex Old French codebor. Middle English code English code 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, verb sense 7 is an ellipsis of code blue (“medical emergency”).

noun
  1. Alternative form of cod.

    alt-of · alternative
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.