All 3 Uses of
cipher
in
Moby Dick
- First: I have personally known three instances where a whale, after receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an interval (in one instance of three years), has been again struck by the same hand, and slain; when the two irons, both marked by the same private cypher, have been taken from the body.†
Chpt 43-45
- These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present connexion.†
Chpt 67-69 *
- And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way.†
Chpt 97-99
Definition:
-
(cipher as in: a secret cipher) a secret way to write a disguised message; or such a message; or the act of writing such a message; or a key used to disguise such a message