All senses trace back toclippings ofwords derived from the prefixcrypto-, 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 mathgeek in earlier decades would be referring to cryptography when using this word. The "secret supporter or follower" sense is clipped from such terms ascryptofascist andcryptocommunist. The several informal senses in medicine referring to several microbe genera or the diseases they cause have existed since circa the mid-20th century.
crypto (countable anduncountable,pluralcryptos)
- (informal, cryptocurrencies)Clipping ofcryptocurrency
2021 February 12, Fred Muvunyi, “Nigeria's cryptocurrency crackdown causes confusion”, inDeutsche Welle News[1],Deutsche Welle, archived fromthe original on13 February 2021, World: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 seecryptos as a safe haven in a battered economy.
2021 April 26, Ryan Browne, “A second bitcoin exchange collapses in Turkey amid crackdown on cryptocurrencies”, inCNBC[2], retrieved26 April 2021:Some Turks have turned tocrypto as a way to protect their savings from skyrocketing inflation and the weakening of its currency, the lira.
2021 September 5, Eric Lipton, Ephrat Livni, “Crypto’s Rapid Move Into Banking Elicits Alarm in Washington”, inThe New York Times[3],→ISSN, archived fromthe original on10 September 2021:But to state and federal regulators and some members of Congress, the entry ofcrypto into banking is cause for alarm.
2021 October 27, Jeanne Sahadi, “How stablecoin is different than other cryptocurrencies … and how it’s not”, inCNN Business[4]: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 othercrypto assets.
- (uncountable, informal)Clipping ofcryptography
1989 June 12, Oded Maler, “Congratulations! You passed the Turing test.”, incomp.ai[5] (Usenet):BTW, Turing's test ideas had a lot of influence (so mycrypto friends tell me) on various notions in Cryptography and Complexity such as interactive proofs and zero-knowledge protocols.
2004, Chey Cobb,Cryptography For Dummies, page20:The CIA is also very intocrypto (which makes sense, as they are the home of spy versus spy),[…]
- Asecretsupporter orfollower.
2016, George Orwell, Peter Davison,George Orwell: A Life in Letters:Martin of course is far too dishonest to be outright acrypto or fellow-traveller, but his main influence is pro-Russian and is certainly intended to be so, and I feel reasonably sure he would quislingise in the case of a Russian occupation, if he had not managed to get away on the last plane.
- (informal, medicine)Clipping ofcryptococcus
- (informal, medicine)Clipping ofcryptococcosis
- (informal, medicine)Clipping ofcryptosporidium
- (informal, pathology)Clipping ofcryptosporidiosis
1996 September, Michael Immel, “The Changing Story of a Virus”, inGay Community News, page 7:With immune system damage come the infections associated with AIDS: PCP, MAC, toxoplasmosis,crypto, meningitis, thrush, lymphomas, CM, fungal infections, and many others.
crypto (comparativemorecrypto,superlativemostcrypto)
- Secret orcovert.
- (Can we add anexample for this sense? )
cryptō
- dative/ablativesingular ofcrypton
crypto f (pluralcryptos)
- alternative form ofcripto
