Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Encrypt
/ɪnˈkrɪpt/verb
To convert data into a form unreadable without a key.
The Greek roots
κρυπτός
kryptós
hidden, concealed
Literally: “to put into hiding”
Follow a root:κρυπτός4 words
The story of the word
The verb is much younger than it looks. Cryptography and cryptogram were centuries old before anyone thought to encrypt anything, which took twentieth-century signals work to make necessary. A κρύπτη was a vault or covered passage, so a church crypt and an encryption key are the same Greek adjective, and the en- on the front is Latin arriving by way of French.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English (with Latin prefix)
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
cryptcrypticcryptographyapocrypha
In a sentence
Encrypt the backup before you post the drive.