English

Noun

decode ‎(plural decodes)

1. (cryptography) A product of decoding
   • 2004, David Cesarani, Holocaust: Responses to the Persecution and Mass Murder of the Jews, page 148

     If and when the remaining Allied intercepts and decodes are opened up, we may expect to learn a great deal more about the later stages of the Holocaust.

   • 2005, Richard Breitman, U.S. Intelligence And The Nazis, page 31

     The British picked up a decode in November 1942 indicating that guards at Auschwitz would need six hundred gas masks.

   • 2006, Ian Pfennigwerth, A Man of Intelligence, page 223

     Decodes stating that Hollandia airfields were becoming overcrowded with IJA aircraft waiting to stage forward to Wewak led to pre-emptive strikes by Allied air forces and the destruction of more than 300 Japanese aircraft on the ground.

   • 2011, Hervie Haufler, Codebreakers' Victory, page 192

     He was sure that references to AK in the intercepts stood for Midway, but none of the decodes made the identification certain.

2. (computing) Output from a program or device used to interpret communication protocols
   • 1999 Laura Wonnacott, "Sniffer Pro sees some switches", Info World, page 37

     This version includes more than 400 decodes that cover everything from legacy decodes to popular decodes and new or updated decodes for such protocols as voice over IP H.323, Server Message Block, Border Gateway Protocol Version 4, and Internet Inter-ORB Protocol

Verb

decode ‎(third-person singular simple present decodes, present participle decoding, simple past and past participle decoded)

1. To convert from an encrypted form to plain text.

   The cryptographer decoded the secret message and sent the result to the officer.

2. To figure out something difficult to interpret.

   I finally managed to decode the nearly illegible doctor's prescription.

Synonyms

• decipher

Antonyms

• encode

Derived terms

• decoder
• codec

Translations