cryptic
Americanadjective
-
mysterious in meaning; puzzling; ambiguous.
a cryptic message.
- Synonyms:
- enigmatic
-
abrupt; terse; short.
a cryptic note.
-
secret; occult.
a cryptic writing.
-
involving or using cipher, code, etc.
-
Zoology. fitted for concealing; serving to camouflage.
noun
adjective
-
hidden; secret; occult
-
(esp of comments, sayings, etc) obscure in meaning
-
(of the coloration of animals) tending to conceal by disguising or camouflaging the shape
Related Words
See ambiguous.
Other Word Forms
- cryptically adverb
- noncryptic adjective
- noncryptical adjective
- noncryptically adverb
Etymology
Origin of cryptic
1595–1605; < Late Latin crypticus < Greek kryptikós hidden. See crypt, -ic
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The claimants had a leaked "ledger" of Associated Newspaper payments, invoices from some private investigators and extracts from reporters notepads with cryptic handwritten details of payments to sources.
From BBC • Mar. 31, 2026
Her concurrence is too cryptic, though, to be of much use to lower courts trying to make sense of Gorsuch’s maximalist rhetoric.
From Slate • Mar. 31, 2026
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s cryptic weekend tweet has roused speculation about whether he is planning to build a semiconductor fabrication facility, or fab, something that costs tens of billions of dollars to build.
From Barron's • Mar. 19, 2026
Within days of the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28, cryptic messages were broadcast globally on a new shortwave radio frequency.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 10, 2026
The world’s greatest biological thinkers, having pored over the problem of heredity, had scarcely advanced the field beyond the cryptic musings of two men who had lived on two Greek islands two thousand years earlier.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
