crypto-, crypt-

1. To solve (a cryptogram) without knowledge of a key.
2. To convert (a cryptogram) into plaintext with proper application of a key.

To put information into code: The computer specialist was encrypting words, numbers, and symbols that would protect users.

A plant with dormant parts located underground: The Moraea ciliata is a geocryptophyte that has perennating organs (surviving from year to year) and has renewal buds hidden or below the surface of the soil.

Wholly hidden or secret; specifically of a cipher incapable of being read except by those who have a key.

An aquatic plant living on or in the water.

An aquatic hemicryptophyte (a herbaceous plant which has its wintering buds at or just above the water surface).

A reference to a desire or fondness for women's black undergarments.

An ingrown (nonvisible) nail [a toenail, one edge of which is overgrown by the nailfold, producing a pyogenic granuloma (nodule or overgrowth of tissue); as a result of faulty trimming of the toenails or pressure from a tight shoe].

The tendency to deny one's disease or to verbally express very little about it: The elderly Mrs. Doubtful had an unwillingness to believe that she had any kind of physical ailment or disorder, although she suffered by not being able to hear very well, and her grown-up children said she had a case of pathocryptia!

Having the function of protectively concealing: applied to the protective mimicry of color and form, observed in insects (especially butterflies and moths and their caterpillars), and some other animals.

A condition in which the testes descend to the scrotum but continue to move up and down, rising high in the inguinal canal at one time and descending to the scrotum at another.

1. A reference to protective resemblances between diverse species.
2. Applied to the resemblance between different organisms (especially insects) having common protective coloration by which they are concealed from attack.