Enigma machine
2
7.9
- noun
- /ɪˈnɪɡmə məˈʃin/
- Specialized
:
máquina Enigma
- The Enigma machine was crucial for encoding German military communications during World War II.
- the German Enigma machine
Examples
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Cracking the code of the Enigma machine significantly aided the Allied forces in their efforts during the war.
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Cracking the Code, originally used to encode business transactions and ward off corporate espionage, during WWII the Enigma machine became a powerful and widely used weapon employed by the Nazis for encryption and decryption of military secrets.
Academic text (2011) -
But we have an Enigma machine.
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But we have an Enigma machine.
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You're trying to break the German Enigma machine,
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The Enigma machine.
Academic text (2003) -
Just having an Enigma machine doesn't help you to decode the messages.
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Historians study the Enigma machine to understand how it encrypted secret messages used by the Nazis.
Synonyms
1
9.9
A machine that decodes secret messages
How Secure
- Specialized
28
8.8
- Specialized
2
7.9
Surface Forms
Morphology
Enigma + machine
The noun 'machine' is transparent but 'Enigma' is a proper name/specialized historical term and is not derivable from common vocabulary. A B1 learner who only knows the constituents would not infer that this is a specific WWII cipher device; even if 'enigma' were understood as 'mystery', that would not reliably yield the precise meaning 'cipher machine', so the expression is not compositional for learners.
Etymology
Enigma machine gets its name from the word enigma, which means 'mystery'. It used turning wheels to scramble normal messages into 'secret messages', so the name stuck and now refers to the machine that makes messages hard to read.