Etymology

polyalphabetic

P3O1L1Y4A1L1P3H4A1B3E1T1I1C3

Today it means: Describing a substitution cipher in which plaintext letters in different positions are enciphered using different substitution alphabets. Full definition →

English alphabetic ← Ancient Greek πολῠ́ς (polŭ́s) ← Proto-Indo-European *polh₁ús
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*pleh₁-
  2. Proto-Indo-European*polh₁ús
  3. Ancient Greekπολῠ́ς (polŭ́s)
  4. Englishpoly-
  5. Englishalphabetic
  6. English todaypolyalphabetic

From poly- + alphabetic.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.