chiffre
noun
chiffre is a noun meaning “A figure or motif (short melodic or lyrical passage that is repeated)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-H-I-F-F-R-E and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 20 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of chiffre is chiffres.
What does chiffre mean?
noun
- 1
A figure or motif (short melodic or lyrical passage that is repeated).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce chiffre?
Chiffre has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of chiffre
- chiffres plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is chiffre?
Chiffre appears about once in every 20 million words in written English, the 134,976th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does chiffre come from?
Borrowed from French chiffre. Doublet of cipher and zero.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).