crypto
Pluralcryptos
Pluralcryptos
- 1Clipping of cryptocurrency.
Many young investors moved into crypto hoping for fast returns.
Regulators are still deciding how to tax profits from crypto.
Note
The sense that now owns the bare word. Every crypto began as a clipping of some longer word built on the prefix crypto-, but through the 2010s and 2020s the currency meaning has crowded out the rest. It works two ways. As a mass noun it means digital currency in general (people turn to crypto to protect their savings). As a count noun it means individual currencies, plural cryptos. Before another noun it acts as a modifier: crypto assets.
- 2Clipping of cryptography.
The bank relies on modern crypto to protect customer accounts.
She specializes in crypto, designing ciphers for secure networks.
Note
The older of the two big clippings. Cryptographers were saying crypto before the currency meaning took the word over. Oded Maler's 1989 post to comp.ai already mentions "my crypto friends," meaning people who work on ciphers and protocols. Unlike the money sense, it has no plural: you study crypto, never cryptos. In a sentence about security rather than markets, this is usually the meaning intended.
- 3Secret or covert; kept hidden rather than openly shown or declared.
Memoirs published after the war revealed the minister's crypto loyalties to the occupying power.
His crypto opposition to the plan only surfaced after the vote.
Similarsecret, covert, hidden, clandestine
Note
The adjective stays close to the prefix it was clipped from and to the secret supporter: crypto loyalties are the kind a crypto hides. It compares with "more" and "most" (more crypto, most crypto) rather than taking -er and -est. Before a noun it can read almost like a detached prefix, so the political or personal context should make clear that "hidden" is meant, not "digital money."
- 4A person who secretly supports or follows a cause or group without declaring that allegiance openly.
The editor never joined the party, but colleagues long suspected him of being a crypto.
After the purge, officials went hunting for cryptos who had hidden their real loyalties for years.
Note
A political label for concealed allegiance. George Orwell, writing about a pro-Russian colleague, judges him too dishonest to be "outright a crypto or fellow-traveller." The pairing is telling: the crypto hides an allegiance, while the fellow traveler sympathizes in the open. The word is mostly used after "be" (to be a crypto). Because the currency meaning now dominates, it reads clearly only where the political setting is obvious.
- 5Clipping of cryptococcus.
The culture grew crypto within days of being plated.
Doctors screen for crypto when a transplant patient develops a fever.
Note
Medicine uses crypto for two organisms and for the two diseases they cause. This is one of the organisms: the soil fungus Cryptococcus, some species of which cause disease. As a count noun it names the organism, something a culture grows or a test detects. The same clipping also names the infection it causes, so in a lab report or chart it is safer to spell out which one is meant.
- 6Clipping of cryptococcosis.
Crypto is a leading cause of meningitis among immunocompromised patients.
Antifungal therapy for crypto can last several months.
Note
The fungal disease, serious and potentially fatal. It is caused by the Cryptococcus neoformans species complex and is thought to be caught by breathing in the fungus from the environment. When crypto means a disease, the verbs give it away: patients have it, and doctors treat it. The inhaled route is what separates it from the intestinal infection, which shortens to the same word.
- 7Clipping of cryptosporidium.
Crypto spreads through water contaminated with infected feces.
Filtering the supply removed most of the crypto from the drinking water.
Note
Here crypto is a protozoan rather than a fungus. Cryptosporidium is an intestinal parasite of humans and other vertebrates. In this sense the word names the organism itself, something that can be filtered from water or found in a sample. Its effects, diarrhea above all, are worst in people with weakened immunity. That is why public-health writing about water supplies uses the word so often.
- 8Clipping of cryptosporidiosis.
Crypto swept through the daycare after one child fell ill.
Most healthy people recover from crypto without specific treatment.
Note
The illness rather than the parasite: an intestinal disease of mammals caused by cryptosporidium. The clipping fits naturally among other clinical shorthand. Michael Immel, writing in Gay Community News in 1996, lists crypto beside PCP, MAC and toxoplasmosis among the infections that come with immune damage. For patients or general readers, the full name avoids any clash with the fungal crypto.
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Origin
All senses are clippings of words built on the prefix crypto-, formed at different times in the 20th and 21st centuries. Since the 2010s and 2020s the "cryptocurrency" sense has dominated, though earlier the word referred to cryptography; the "secret supporter" sense comes from terms like cryptofascist and cryptocommunist, and several informal medical senses date from around the mid-20th century.