Other forms: codes, coding, coded
Code is the written instructions a computer program is made of — lines of text telling a machine exactly what to do. A few hundred lines of code sitting behind one login button; a bug hiding somewhere in the code.
Outside computing, code has two other lives. It is a system for hiding or shortening a message — Morse code, a spy's code, a code somebody has to crack — and it is a number or word that opens something: your PIN, a postcode, a discount code, a barcode. It is also a set of rules a group agrees to live by: a dress code, a code of conduct, the highway code. As a verb, to code is to write programs, and coding is what schools now teach. Watch the countability: the rules and the secret systems come in codes, but the software sense stays uncountable — a lot of code, never many codes.
1nouncodeThe written instructions that computer programs are made of.
“He spent the whole evening fixing one line of code.”
2verbwriteTo write the instructions for a computer program.
“She learned to code at fourteen on a borrowed laptop.”
3nounsystemA system of signs, letters or numbers for sending messages secretly or briefly.
“The whole message was written in code.”
4nounnumberA number or word that lets you get in or get something.
“Type the four-digit code into the keypad by the door.”
5nounsetA set of rules that a group agrees to follow.
“The school has a strict dress code.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
code is a system of instructions or rules.
Latin caudex was the trunk of a tree, and then the block of wood, smeared with wax, that people wrote on. That became cōdex, a book, and then Old French code, the word for a body of law — which is the sense Middle English borrowed. A line of code shares its name with a slab of Roman timber.
Middle English
code
English, today
code
Built from
From Middle English code. From Middle English code (“system of law”), from Old French code (“system of law”), from Latin cōdex, later form of caudex (“the stock or stem of a tree, a board or tablet of wood smeared over with wax, on which the ancients originally wrote; hence, a book, a writing.”). a doublet of codex. Verb to suffer medical emergency is an an ellipsis of code blue.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA