skytale
skytale is the alternative form of scytale.
Meaning of scytale
Noun
scytale (plural scytales)
- A cylinder with a strip of parchment wound around it on which a message is written, used for cryptography by the ancient Spartans.
- But, being perſwaded that they would not hear any propoſal to that effect, he delivered each of them a ſcytale, or ſtaff on which the Lacedemonians wrote their ſecret letters, and with theſe diſpatch’d them home to the Ephori.1753, Desiderius Erasmus, anonymous translator, The Apophthegms of the Ancients, volume I, A. Millar, translation of Apophthegmatum opus (in New Latin), pages 53–54
Forms of skytale
| plural | skytales |
|---|
Origin of skytale
From Ancient Greek σκυτάλη (skutálē, “club, baton, cylinder used for encoding and decoding”).
Questions about skytale
- What is skytale the alternative form of?
- Skytale is the alternative form of scytale.
Words near skytale in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: skytale (page history and authors); scytale (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.
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