decipherer (desiferer)

One who interprets what is written in ciphers, or reads what is written obscurely. IMG:content-2162.png:[blocks in formation] There are a sort of those narrow-eyed decipherers ... that will extort strange and abstruse meanings out of any subject. B. Jonson , Every Man out of his Humour. decipherment (de-si'fer-ment), n. [F. déchiffrement; as decipher + -ment.) The act of deciphering; interpretation. They [the A yrian tablets exhumed by Layard and Smith] are now among the collections of the British Museum, and their decipherment is throwing a new and strange light on the cosmogony and religions of the early East. Dawson, Origin of World, p. 19.