Thesaurus.com
Dictionary.com
Definitions
Trivia Time
What ancient artifact provided the key that allowed scholars to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs?

decipher

[dih-sahy-fer] / dɪˈsaɪ fər /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

You don’t need to decide what to watch or decipher subtext and creative interpretation.

From Slate ● Sep. 26, 2026

The competition offered a $700,000 Grand Prize to the first person who could decipher four passages containing at least 140 characters each from two Herculaneum scrolls imaged with X-ray CT.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 26, 2026

Those cases were of a single charge, were easier to decipher and involved significantly less evidence.

From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026

It’s looking like a year where the winners will be easy to decipher, according to awards prognosticators, which includes The Times’ award columnist Glenn Whipp.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026

If he could decipher Archimedes’s scrolls, he could do amazing things.

From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan

Cathy, meanwhile, deciphers the key to life through Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” a story about a girl like her who survives an upside-down world.

From Salon ● Oct. 3, 2026

Ms. Allen traces pen names, decodes handwriting and deciphers marginalia in Richmond’s correspondence and books.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

The fact that the bat brainstem processes various complex acoustic signals differently can also help scientists to understand how the brain deciphers and processes complex human speech.

From Science Daily ● Feb. 23, 2024

She studies for the driver’s license test with them, deciphers public transportation for them and most of all just lets them know she is here to listen and help.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 26, 2023

The text he deciphers is written large, written across the face of the continent, written in mountain-chains and ocean depths, and in the piled strata of the globe.

From Time and Change by John Burroughs

For decades, they remained largely untouched, but researchers have now deciphered them, uncovering texts that range from magical rituals to royal records and everyday administrative notes.

From Science Daily ● May 5, 2026

But the point for Kagan in bringing up this legislative history was merely to provide “yet more proof” of statutory meaning already deciphered through “straight-up statutory construction.”

From Slate ● Mar. 4, 2026

The data turned out to be essential to cracking the case, the people said, a breakthrough that happened only recently when a tech-savvy law-enforcement officer wrote a new computer program that finally deciphered the information.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 14, 2025

The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far.

From Barron's ● Nov. 19, 2025

I knew she was wondering if I’d deciphered the secret, but as always I was still a few steps behind her.

From "The Detective's Assistant" by Kate Hannigan

Come early to mingle with the cast, in character, of course, who may or may not need your help in deciphering some puzzles.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026

But there is no standardized public key for deciphering them; codes vary among plants and products, and the absence of an obvious “TF” is no guarantee Taylor Farms wasn’t involved.

From Salon ● Aug. 14, 2026

Turing played a crucial role in the Allies' victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two by helping to crack codes and deciphering the infamous Enigma machine at Bletchley Park.

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026

The bots also weren’t great at deciphering things like maps.

From MarketWatch ● May 13, 2026

It was only a matter of deciphering what they needed to find.

From "Book Scavenger" by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman


Vocabulary lists containing decipher

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

Get a word

Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Just like flashcards, but way more fun

Don't take our word for it. Leave the boring studying behind and join VocabTrainer today. You'll learn even faster and never look back.

Take me to Vocabulary.com