undercoding

Verb

undercode (third-person singular simple present undercodes, present participle undercoding, simple past and past participle undercoded)

1. (intransitive) To communicate using codes that do not convey the entire message, but which rely on the recipient's construction of meaning through connotation or subtexts.
   • The immature committee — possibly a zero-history group — may express itself simply and emotionally, and thereby undercodes.1984, The Journal of the American Forensic Association
2. (transitive) To use or convey (a message) in a way that requires the recipient to construct part of the meaning.
   • To officers and dispatchers it also connotes "good police work" and "crime work" that is honorable and important. Each message is undercoded in respect of police ideology (Eco 1979:135ff., Manning 1986).1992, Peter K. Manning, Organizational Communication, →ISBN, page 63
3. (transitive) To communicate (information) indirectly, by means of an undercode.
   • Thus theology is also a logocentric system that undercodes mythology.1996 -, Kyong Liong Kim, Caged in Our Own Signs: A Book about Semiotics, →ISBN, page 70
4. To encode a secret message that is masked by a surface message or stream of data.
   • Just as she'd needed him to undercode a message into the financial routing she prayed someone with exceptional eskills would find.2013, J. D. Robb, Thankless in Death, →ISBN, page 37
5. To represent by a code that indicates a lower level of service than what was provided.
   • Generally, physicians "undercode" defensively as routine practice. That is, a physician may indicate a level of service less than that actually rendered due to the difficulties in documenting the visit properly for the appropriate service level.2001, Jerome H. Carter, Electronic Medical Records: A Guide for Clinicians and Administrators, →ISBN
6. To use fewer codes than are needed to fully describe something.
   • Coding should be done with great exactness: it is better to "overcode" than to "undercode."1972, Alice Schlegel, Male dominance and female autonomy

See all 9 meanings of undercode