Cipher

A cipher is a code, something which presents a convoluted, obscured face and which can only be read with great effort, or secret knowledge. The word can also refer, however, to an intertexture of letters, especially the initials of a name engraved as a monogram---especially used of Turkish or Arabic names so written. How did that sense come about? Probably through the sheer bafflement of the earliest Englishmen to encounter these elaborate swirls composed from foreign alphabets according to the patterns of vastly differently-constructed names ...