Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
noun
A cylinder with a strip of parchment wound around it on which a message is written, used for cryptography by the ancient Spartans.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: historical
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
From Latin scytale (“cylinder used for encoding and decoding”), from Ancient Greek σκυτάλη (skutálē, “club, baton, cylinder used for encoding and decoding”).
Across languages
3 source translations are retained for this English entry.
