crypto
/ˈkɹɪptoʊ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.60 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Nigeria—the world's second-largest Bitcoin market after the United States—has banned the trading of cryptocurrencies. It's triggered anger among Nigerians who see cryptos as a safe haven in a battered economy."
- "Some Turks have turned to crypto as a way to protect their savings from skyrocketing inflation and the weakening of its currency, the lira."
- "But to state and federal regulators and some members of Congress, the entry of crypto into banking is cause for alarm."
- "So investors buy stablecoins not to make a profit but instead as a place to store money within the cryptocurrency infrastructure and to use when buying and selling other crypto assets."
- "BTW, Turing's test ideas had a lot of influence (so my crypto friends tell me) on various notions in Cryptography and Complexity such as interactive proofs and zero-knowledge protocols."
- "The CIA is also very into crypto (which makes sense, as they are the home of spy versus spy), […]"
Etymology
All senses trace back to clippings of words derived from the prefix crypto-, developed at various times in the 20th and 21st centuries. During the 2010s and 2020s, the "cryptocurrency" sense has become the dominant sense. The "cryptography" sense predates that one; thus, a computer or math geek in earlier decades would be referring to cryptography when using this word. The "secret supporter or follower" sense is clipped from such terms as cryptofascist and cryptocommunist. The several informal senses in medicine referring to several microbe genera or the diseases they cause have existed since circa the mid-20th century.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈkɹɪptoʊ/
- British English: /ˈkɹɪptəʊ/