chiffre
English edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from French chiffre. Doublet of cipher and zero.
Noun edit
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 edit
Etymology edit
From Medieval Latin cifra (“zero”), from Andalusian Arabic صِفر (ṣifr, “empty”). Doublet of zéro.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
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 edit
Descendants edit
- → German: Chiffre
- → Ottoman Turkish: شیفره (şifre)
- Turkish: şifre
- → Polish: szyfr
- → Russian: шифр (šifr)
- → Serbo-Croatian:
See also edit
Further reading edit
- “chiffre”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Old French edit
Alternative forms edit
Noun edit
chiffre oblique singular, m (oblique plural chiffres, nominative singular chiffres, nominative plural chiffre)
Descendants edit
References edit
- Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (1881) (chiffre)