POLYGRAPHY, POLYGRAPHIA, or Polygraphice, the art of writing in various unusual manners or cyphers; as also of deciphering the same. The word is formed from the Greek, πολύ, multum, and γραφία, scriptura, "writing."
The ancients seem to have been very little acquainted with this art; nor is there any mark of their having gone beyond the Lacedæmonian scytala. Trithemius, Porta, Vigenere, and Father Nicéron, have written on the subject of polygraphy or cyphers. See CIPHER.