code

American  

[kohd] / koʊd /

noun

• codes
  plural

1. a system for communication by telegraph, heliograph, etc., in which long and short sounds, light flashes, etc., are used to symbolize the content of a message.

   Morse code.

2. a system used for brevity or secrecy of communication, in which arbitrarily chosen words, letters, or symbols are assigned definite meanings.

3. indirect wording that is euphemistic, deceptive, or opaque.

   The firm says its testing methodology is “proprietary”—which some believe is code for “hidden from scrutiny.”

4. any set of standards set forth and enforced by a local government agency for the protection of public safety, health, etc., as in the structural safety of buildings building code, health requirements for plumbing, ventilation, etc. sanitary code or health code, and the specifications for fire escapes or exits fire code.

5. a systematically arranged collection or compendium of laws, rules, or regulations.

6. any authoritative, general, systematic, and written statement of the legal rules and principles applicable in a given legal order to one or more broad areas of life.

7. a word, letter, number, or other symbol used in a code system to mark, represent, or identify something.

   The code on the label shows the date of manufacture.

8. Computers.

   1. a set of symbols that can be interpreted by a computer or piece of software: Java code;

      binary code;

      Java code;

      ASCII code.

   2. the symbolic arrangement of statements or instructions in a computer program, or the set of instructions in such a program.

      That program took 3000 lines of code.

9. any system or collection of rules and regulations.

   a gentleman's code of behavior.

10. Medicine/Medical. a directive or alert to a hospital team assigned to emergency resuscitation of patients.

11. Genetics. genetic code.

12. Linguistics.

    1. the system of rules shared by the participants in an act of communication, making possible the transmission and interpretation of messages.

    2. (in sociolinguistic theory) one of two distinct styles of language use that differ in degree of explicitness and are sometimes thought to be correlated with differences in social class.

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verb (used with object)

• codes,
  present (3rd person singular)
• coded,
  past participle,  past
• coding
  present participle

1. to translate (a message) into a code; encode.

2. to categorize or identify by assigning a code to.

   All specimens were coded prior to the test.

3. to arrange or enter (laws or statutes) in a code.

4. Computers. to write code for (a computer program or application) (often followed byup ).

   Hire a programmer to code up a website for you.

verb (used without object)

• codes,
  present (3rd person singular)
• coded,
  past participle,  past
• coding
  present participle

1. Genetics. to specify the amino acid sequence of a protein by the sequence of nucleotides comprising the gene for that protein.

   a gene that codes for the production of insulin.

2. Computers. to write computer code.

code British  

/ kəʊd /

noun

1. a system of letters or symbols, and rules for their association by means of which information can be represented or communicated for reasons of secrecy, brevity, etc See also genetic code

   binary code

   Morse code

2. a message in code

3. a symbol used in a code

4. a conventionalized set of principles, rules, or expectations

   a code of behaviour

5. a system of letters or digits used for identification or selection purposes

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verb

1. to translate, transmit, or arrange into a code

code Scientific  

/ kōd /

1. A system of signals used to represent letters or numbers in transmitting messages.

2. The instructions in a computer program. Instructions written by a programmer in a programming language are often called source code. Instructions that have been converted into machine language that the computer understands are called machine code or executable code.

3. See also programming language

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code Cultural  

1. A series of instructions designed to be fed into a computer.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• coder
  noun
• subcode
  noun
• precode
  verb (used with object)
• recode
  verb (used with object)
• codeless
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• codes
  plural

Participles

• coding
  present
• coded
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• code
  simple
• codes
  simple
• have coded
  perfect
• has coded
  perfect
• am coding
  progressive
• are coding
  progressive
• is coding
  progressive
• have been coding
  perfect progressive
• has been coding
  perfect progressive

Past

• coded
  simple
• had coded
  perfect
• was coding
  progressive
• were coding
  progressive
• had been coding
  perfect progressive

Future

• will code
  simple
• will have coded
  perfect
• will be coding
  progressive
• will have been coding
  perfect progressive

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Etymology

Origin of code

First recorded in 1275–1325; Middle English, from Anglo-French, Old French, from Latin cōdex “book”; see codex

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Explanation

A code can be a set of principles. Our laws make up our legal code, and many people govern themselves through a personal "code of honor." Code can also mean a system for sending secret messages, or programming language for computers. In 1303, you could only use code to mean a set of laws, such as a code of conduct. It wasn’t until 1808 that you could use code to describe a system for sending secret messages. The verb form appeared in 1815, meaning to create laws or send secret messages, and gave birth to encode. In the computer programming context, encode was shortened back again to code, meaning to write instructions for a computer program. Soon the lines of text themselves began to be referred to as simply code.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

code codes coded coding

The company claimed an unfinished code left in the system, part of a prank, led to the crash.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026

His expressive handling of broad color areas may be abruptly stopped by a fussy attention to his personnel’s facial features, as if a Victorian code of good painterly behavior were suddenly reasserting itself.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026

There are variations within this group’s politics, but Luckey has a background well-aligned with Hegseth’s hypermasculine code.

From Slate ● Oct. 15, 2026

It also said: "At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data."

From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026

Miss Genovese’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes; she seems offended by the notion that her own dress code could be improved upon, or that her operators would be less accomplished than the Hello Girls overseas.

From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse

It also asked the Justice Department to prevent QR-code-based tabulation in Georgia and require Georgia to end its use of the codes in six months.

From Salon ● Oct. 16, 2026

"In effect, lipids work like postal codes, giving distant but related parts of the brain the same chemical address," says D'Angelo.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 13, 2026

The posts include personalized discount codes, suggesting the creators may receive financial compensation if a purchase is made.

From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026

They had pledged enough cash for 25 million children born between 2016 and 2024, in zip codes with median family income below $150,000.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026

Simple codes like this are easy to remember, but anything complicated will need a code book, which can be hard to lug around.

From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield

Fire is usually coded as aggression, danger and toughness.

From Salon ● Sep. 27, 2026

These, too, are world models, though they are painstakingly coded and highly specialized.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

If this had been coded correctly, a "timelier" ambulance response would "likely" have been sent.

From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2026

It also prohibits the use of “sell by” dates on food packaging, but it does allow coded “sell by” dates that retain stock rotation information for retailers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 26, 2026

The information content of these pulses is negligible: a succession of simple numerical patterns coded into beeps.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

This ability is related to a process known as predictive coding.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 15, 2026

According to Meta’s benchmark data, the flagship Muse Wonder Full beats out top OpenAI and Anthropic models on memory retention, financial analysis and long-horizon coding tasks — though rival models maintain advantages in other areas.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 12, 2026

Its Codex coding product and other business tools are now gaining ground, and it has released additional iterations of its cost-efficient models.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026

Microsoft's in-house models currently only power a few products, such as GitHub's Copilot coding tool.

From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026

Scoob definitely prefers computer coding to anything sports-related.

From "Fast Pitch" by Nic Stone

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