- enigma
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/euh nig"meuh/, n., pl. enigmas, enigmata /-meuh teuh/.1. a puzzling or inexplicable occurrence or situation: His disappearance is an enigma that has given rise to much speculation.2. a person of puzzling or contradictory character: To me he has always been an enigma, one minute completely insensitive, the next moved to tears.3. a saying, question, picture, etc., containing a hidden meaning; riddle.4. (cap.) a German-built enciphering machine developed for commercial use in the early 1920s and later adapted and appropriated by German and other Axis powers for military use through World War II.[1530-40; < L aenigma < Gk aínigma, equiv. to ainik- (s. of ainíssesthai to speak in riddles, deriv. of aînos fable) + -ma n. suffix of result]
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Device used by the German military to encode strategic messages before and during World War II. The Enigma code was first broken by the Poles in the early 1930s, so that German messages were eventually intercepted and deciphered by Allied code-breakers during the war.* * *
▪ German code devicedevice used by the German military command to encode strategic messages before and during World War II. The Enigma code was first broken by the Poles, under the leadership of mathematician Marian Rejewski, in the early 1930s. In 1939, with the growing likelihood of a German invasion, the Poles turned their information over to the British, who set up a secret code-breaking group, known as Ultra, under mathematician Alan M. Turing (Turing, Alan M.). Because the Germans shared their encryption device with the Japanese, Ultra also contributed to Allied victories in the Pacific. See also Cryptology: Developments during World Wars I and II (cryptology).* * *
Universalium. 2010.