scytale

American  

[skee-tahl-ay, ski-, sit-uh-lee, skit-, sahy-tayl, skahy-, -tuhl] / skiˈtɑl eɪ, skɪ-, ˈsɪt ə li, ˈskɪt-, ˈsaɪ teɪl, ˈskaɪ-, -təl /

Or skytale

noun

1. a rod used in ancient cryptography, around which a strip would be wrapped and a message written across it: a rod of the same circumference could be used to decode the message.

2. this method of encryption or the resulting encrypted message.

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Etymology

Origin of scytale

< Greek skytálē rod, staff, club.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

scytale

Hence scytale came to mean generally a Spartan dispatch, which was characteristically laconic in its brevity.

From Apollonius of Tyana, the Philosopher-Reformer of the First Century A.D. by George Robert Stowe Mead

But Juba says that they are an invention of the Phrygians, and that they were also called scytaliæ, from their resemblance in thickness to the scytale.

From The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athen?us by Athen?us

The boa scytale, or spotted boa, is of a greyish colour, marked with round spots, and scarcely inferior in size to the former.

From The Western World Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North and South America by William Henry Giles Kingston

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