Table of Contents
The word for today is…
cryptic (adjective):
1 : secret, occult
2a : having or seeming to have a hidden or ambiguous meaning
b : marked by an often perplexing brevity
3 : serving to conceal
4 : not recognized
5 : employing cipher or code
Source : Merriam -Webster
Etymology : The history of “cryptic” starts with “kryptein,” a Greek word meaning “to hide.” Can you uncover other “kryptein” relatives in English? Not surprisingly, crypt, meaning “underground chamber,” is one. The element “krypton” would be another correct guess, and so would “apocrypha,” which can mean “writings of dubious authenticity.” “Kryptein” also gave us several words having to do with secret codes, such as “cryptogram” (“a communication in cipher or code”) and “cryptography” (“the coding and decoding of secret messages”). And, in fact, something “cryptic” can sometimes seem as if written in code.
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