The paradox of 'code'
There鈥檚 a four-letter word I keep running into, and this week I鈥檝e finally decided to look into it. No, I鈥檓 not going to get into anything rude here. And for what it鈥檚 worth, unlike most of the words we mean when we say 鈥渇our-letter word,鈥� this one is of Latin origin, not Anglo-Saxon.听
The word is code. Its first definition as a noun in the Oxford English Dictionary, labeled 鈥淩oman Law,鈥� reads, 鈥淥ne of the various systematic collections of statutes made by later emperors,鈥� such as Justinian鈥檚 code.
Its first cited use is in the enticingly titled work 鈥淗andlyng Synne,鈥� by poet and historian Robert Manning, in 1303.
Code came from the Latin codex, in turn a variant on caudex. The original meaning of that word was 鈥渢he trunk of a tree.鈥� From there codex was extended to mean wooden tablet, book, or specifically, a code of laws.
The idea behind a 鈥渃ode鈥� is to compile, or bundle, a lot of disparate bits of legislation into a single volume, or series of volumes, where they are more or less freely accessible, in libraries or, today, .听
I鈥檝e been running into the 鈥淯.S. Code鈥� frequently in a book I鈥檝e been working on. A law will be known as, say, the Administrative Procedure Act (1946), and have a further tag as Public Law 79-404 鈥� indicating that it was the 404th piece of legislation to pop out of the sausage mill of the 79th Congress (1945-47). But it will be 鈥渃odified,鈥� as the expression goes, as, in this instance, U.S. Code Vol. 5, Sec. 500鈥�596 (2012).
From 1804, we have the Code Napol茅on 鈥� another compilation of laws from another emperor.听
But during the 19th century, code expanded from a strictly legal meaning to 鈥渁 system or collection of rules or regulations on any subject.鈥� Oxford cites a reference from Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 鈥淚n the legislative as in the religious Code.鈥�
The sense of 鈥渃ode of honour鈥� arose about this time.
The 19th century also saw the rise of code to mean 鈥渁 system of words arbitrarily used for other words or for phrases, to secure brevity and secrecy.鈥�
In the days of paying by the word for one鈥檚 messages, people learned to use code to save on the cost of their telegrams.
That must be what the Pall Mall Gazette was getting at when it reported, in 1884, 鈥淭elegraph companies had to face ... the extension of the use of code words.鈥� It sounds like the annoyance today鈥檚 television advertisers face when viewers TiVo past their commercials, or catch all the good parts on YouTube, doesn鈥檛 it?
As a verb, code goes back to the early 19th century 鈥� but Oxford鈥檚 examples sound very contemporary. Here鈥檚 one from 1815: 鈥淩obbery ... Is sternly coded as a deadly crime.鈥�
The computing sense of code goes back to the 1940s. Genetic code, which builds metaphorically on the idea of 鈥渋nstructions for a machine,鈥� with man as the machine, made its appearance in 1961, according to .听
Today, that dictionary gives a couple of for code as a verb that would appear to be mutually contradictory: 鈥渢o put (a message) into the form of a code so that it can be kept secret鈥� and also 鈥渢o mark (something) with a code so that it can be identified.鈥澛�
This is the paradox of code: It refers both to ways of making things secret and to ways of making things known.
