decipherings

Making sense of

Decipherings are acts of making sense of something obscure or encoded.

The word applies to cracking codes, reading difficult handwriting, or interpreting unclear signals: Her decipherings of the ancient manuscripts took years.

Each deciphering converts the illegible or mysterious into something comprehensible.

cryptographic

codebreaking

Solving secret communications

decryptionsConverting coded to plain
cryptanalysisStudy of breaking ciphers
EnigmaGerman encryption apparatus

Bletchley · unscrambling · substitution · transposition · Rosetta · hieroglyphics · cuneiform · intelligence · interceptions · NSA

handwriting

reading

Interpreting written text

transcriptionsWritten versions of speech
paleographyStudy of ancient handwriting
manuscriptsHandwritten or typed originals

cursive · illegible · scrawl · signatures · archival · graphology · notation · shorthand · marginalia · annotations

investigative

puzzle-solving

Finding answers to challenges

unravelingProcess of coming undone
mysteriesUnexplained phenomena or events
forensicsScientific crime-scene analysis

sleuthing · discoveries · breakthroughs · revelations · uncoverings · motives · alibis · connections · patterns · trails

interpretive

interpretations

Explanations of meaning

readingsDisplayed measurements or interpretations
analysesDetailed studies of parts
understandingsShared knowledge or agreements

explanations · clarifications · elucidations · exegeses · translations · sense-making · hermeneutics · unraveling · untangling · parsing

Opposites

code/cipher transformation

decipheringsencryptions

Data converted to code

encodings · encrypting · encoding · codings · scrambling

understanding/comprehension

decipheringsobfuscations

Deliberate acts of confusion

mystifications · confoundings · garbling · concealments · muddlings

Family

deciphering

Familiarity: Top 1,000,000
Profile: Used worldwide · Timeless · Everyday, not technical · Rated G