Word.ws English Dictionary

codebook

codebook noun: a book, table, database, or other object that stores the mapping between plaintext words or phrases and their equivalents in a code.

Noun

codebook (plural codebooks)

  1. A book, table, database, or other object that stores the mapping between plaintext words or phrases and their equivalents in a code.
    • In the 19th century codebooks were used not so much for secrecy as for compression, to bring down the prohibitive cost of telegraph communication. […] But when Dr. Bellovin hunted though the card catalog, his interest was piqued by an 1882 codebook whose title included the word “secrecy.”2011 July 25, John Markoff, “Codebook Shows an Encryption Form Dates Back to Telegraphs”, in The New York Times
    • Here's the codebook! Study it again! You mixed up K and T! One more mistake and you're fired!2025, Jason, Death in Trieste, page unpaged
  2. A lookup table.
    • We assume that DWT coefficients belong to a codeblock that is divided by its quantization step size in advance and the two codebooks, C⁰ and C¹, for the two quantizers can be defined as […]2013, Kazuhiro Kondo, Multimedia Information Hiding Technologies and Methodologies for Controlling Data, Hershey, P.A.: Information Science Reference, →ISBN, page 226, column 2
  3. A list of disorders or conditions and the codes that represent them.
    • The change, which has so far been approved by each committee that has considered it, is under review for the next edition of the W.H.O. codebook, which classifies diseases and influences the treatment of patients worldwide.2016 July 26, Pam Belluck, “W.H.O. Weighs Dropping Transgender Identity From List of Mental Disorders”, in The New York Times

codebook meaning in Indonesian

codebook in Indonesian

cryptography: mapping between plaintext and code
buku sandi

Forms of codebook

pluralcodebooks

Origin of codebook

From code + book.

Questions about codebook

What does codebook mean?
Codebook means a book, table, database, or other object that stores the mapping between plaintext words or phrases and their equivalents in a code.
What is codebook in Indonesian?
Codebook in Indonesian is buku sandi. See Codebook meaning in Indonesian.
What part of speech is codebook?
Codebook is a noun.
What is the plural of codebook?
The plural of codebook is codebooks.

Words near codebook in the dictionary

  1. codeball
  2. codebase
  3. codebases
  4. codeblock
  5. codeblocks
  6. codebook
  7. codebooks
  8. codebreaker
  9. codebreakers
  10. codebreaking
  11. codebtor

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: codebook (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-codebook.wav.

Cite this entry: “codebook.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/codebook. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.