|vēzhə|ne(ə)r- noun
Usage: usually capitalized V
Etymology: after Blaise de Vigénère died 1596 French diplomat and student of cryptography
: polyalphabetic substitution with alphabets derived from one pair of primary alphabets by sliding (as in the Vigenère tableau) for which the usual keying formula is P+K.C where P is the position of the plaintext letter in the plain component, C that of the ciphertext letter in the cipher sequence, and K that of the key letter in the normal alphabet and where positions are numbered from 0 to 25 and 26 is subtracted from sums above 25 — compare beaufort cipher , progressive-alphabet cipher