decoding

American  

[dee-koh-ding] / diˈkoʊ dɪŋ /

noun

1. the act, process, or result of extracting meaning or usable information, as from a code, written or spoken symbols, or an electronic signal.

   The device that performs the decoding is called a digital to analog converter.

   Recent decodings of the hieroglyphs at Palenque refer to dates beyond the end of the Mayan calendar.

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adjective

1. relating to the process of extracting meaning or usable information, as from a code or an electronic signal.

   The decoding algorithm will have to discern a valid signal from the noise.

Etymology

Origin of decoding

First recorded in 1895–1900; decod(e) ( def. ) + -ing ¹ ( def. ) for the noun; decod(e) ( def. ) + -ing ² ( def. ) for the adjective

Example Sentences

The company promises Ising will deliver up to three times higher accuracy for the decoding process central to quantum error correction.

From Barron's • Apr. 14, 2026

Exxon’s algae work was done in conjunction with Synthetic Genomics, a company founded by Craig Venter, a pioneer in decoding the human genome, that later operated under the name Viridos.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 31, 2026

Scientists have spent years decoding the honey bee "waggle dance," a highly sophisticated form of communication.

From Science Daily • Mar. 24, 2026

MarketWatch has since reviewed the paper, which cited “high accuracy and state-of-the art per-cycle decoding times” when running the algorithm on a field-programmable gate array chip from AMD.

From MarketWatch • Oct. 24, 2025

Thanks in part to a young mathematician named Alan Turing, they came up with new ways to tackle Enigma, including much more powerful decoding machines.

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

Related Words

• adaptation
• explanation
• reading
• rendering
• rendition
• transcription
• version