Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Steganography
/ˌstɛɡəˈnɒɡrəfi/noun
The practice of hiding a message inside something innocent, so that nobody suspects a message exists.
The Greek roots
στεγανός
steganós
covered, watertight
γραφή
graphḗ
writing
Literally: “covered writing”
The story of the word
Johannes Trithemius gave the word its life in his Steganographia of 1499, a book disguised as a manual of angel magic whose real content was cipher instruction; it sat on the papal index for nearly two centuries. Cryptography hides the meaning, steganography hides the fact. Herodotus describes both ancestors of the craft, a message tattooed on a slave's scalp and another scratched into the wood under a wax tablet.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
cryptographybiographygraphitephotograph
In a sentence
The photographs looked ordinary until the analysts checked them for steganography.