Alice

See also: alice and ALICE

English

Etymology

From Middle English Alice, from Old French Alys, Alice, from Old High German Adalheidis, proposed to derive from Proto-Germanic *aþalaz (“noble”) + *haiduz (“character”). Doublet of Adelaide.

Pronunciation

• (UK, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈæl.ɪs/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ælɪs

Proper noun

Alice

1. A female given name from the Germanic languages popular in England since the Middle Ages.
   • 1380s-1390s, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale:

     That Iankin clerk, and my gossib dame Alis, / And I my-self, in-to the feldes wente.

   • 1871 Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, Chapter 6:

     "My name is Alice, but—"

     "It's a stupid name enough!" Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. "What does it mean?"

     "Must a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully.

     "Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh, "my name means the shape I am—and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost."

   • 1968 Kurt Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House, Delacorte Press, page xiv:

     She was heavenly to look at, and graceful, both in and out of water. She was a sculptress. She was christened 'Alice', but she used to deny that she was really an Alice. I agreed. Everybody agreed. Sometime in a dream maybe I will find out what her real name was.

2. (cryptography, physics) The person or system that sends a message to another person or system conventionally known as Bob.
   • 1978, V.S. Bagad; I.A. Dhotre, Computer Networks‎^[1], Technical Publications, →ISBN:

     Alice sends the message, "I am Alice," to Bob. Bob chooses a nonce, $N$ and sends it to Alice. Alice encrypts the nonce using Alice and Bob's symmetric secret key, $K_{A-B}$, and sends the encrypted nonce, $K_{A-B}(N)$ back to Bob.

   • 2009, N. David Mermin, It's About Time: Understanding Einstein's Relativity, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 19:

     Alice opens her lantern, Bob opens his the instant he sees Alice's, and Alice notes the time $T$ that passes between the moment she opens hers and the moment she sees the light returning to her from Bob's.

3. (Australia, slang, often with "the") Alice Springs, Australia.
   • 2002, Sylvia Lawson, Budgerigars, and Positions of Ignorance, in How Simone de Beauvoir died in Australia: stories and essays, page 17,

     At that point in my second visit to the Alice, I'd been there only a day. […] they're doing Australia in two weeks, with a few days each for Sydney, the Alice and the Rock, Kakadu and Cairns.

   • 2003, Janet Judy McIntyre-Mills, quoting Olive Veverbrants, Critical systemic praxis for social and environmental justice (page 27),

     In 1892 my Chinese grandfather lived in Alice.

   • 2004, Larry Habegger, Travelers' Tales Australia: True Stories (page 7),

     "Don't waste yer time in The Alice, get out and see the country — that's what yer 'ere for."

4. A city in North Dakota.
5. A city, the county seat of Jim Wells County, Texas.

Synonyms

• Party A (placeholder)
• Alice Springs (city)

Derived terms

• Alice band
• Alice blue
• Alice in Wonderland

 

Related terms

• (given names):

• Adelaide
• Alicia
• Alison
• Allison
• Alyssa
• Heidi

 

Translations

female given name

• Arabic: أَلِيس‎ f (ʔalīs)
• Catalan: Alícia (ca) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 愛麗絲／爱丽丝 (zh) (Àilìsī)

• Czech: Alice (cs) f
• Danish: Alice
• Dutch: Alice (nl) f
• Finnish: Aliisa (fi), Alisa (fi); Liisa (fi)
• French: Alice (fr) f
• Galician: Alicia (gl) f
• German: Alice (de) f
• Greek: Αλίκη (el) f (Alíki)
• Greenlandic: Aaliit
• Icelandic: Lísa (is) f
• Italian: Alice (it) f
• Japanese: アリス (Arisu)
• Korean: 앨리스 (Aelliseu)
• Latvian: Alise f
• Norwegian: Alice (no)
• Polish: Alicja (pl) f
• Portuguese: Alice (pt) f
• Russian: Али́са (ru) f (Alísa), Э́лис f (Élis)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: Алиса f

  Roman: Alisa (sh) f

• Spanish: Alicia (es) f
• Swahili: Elisi
• Swedish: Alice (sv)
• Turkish: Alis
• Volapük: Lälid
• Welsh: Alys f

message sender in cryptography

• Finnish: Alice (fi)
• German: Alice (de) f
• Portuguese: Alice (pt) f

See also

• Bob

Further reading

• Alice (given name) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Alice and Bob on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Alice Springs on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Alice, North Dakota on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Alice, Texas on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Alcie, Celia, Licea, ileac

Cebuano

Etymology

From English Alice, from Old French Alis, Alice, from Old High German Adalheidis, from adal (“noble”) + heit (“kind, sort”).

Proper noun

Alice

1. a female given name from English
2. the titular character of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Czech

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈalɪt͡sɛ]

Proper noun

Alice f

1. a female given name, equivalent to English Alice

Danish

Etymology

From English Alice.

Proper noun

Alice

1. a female given name

French

Etymology

From Old French Alis, Alice, from Old High German Adalheidis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /a.lis/

• Audio

  (file)

Proper noun

Alice f

1. a female given name, equivalent to English Alice

Related terms

• Adélaïde
• Adèle
• Adeline
• Alicia
• Alix

 

Anagrams

• celai
• Célia

German

Etymology

Borrowed from English Alice. Doublet of Adelheid.

Pronunciation

• (Standard Northern) IPA^(key): /aˈliː.sə/, [ʔaˈliː.sə]

• Audio

  (file)

• (Austrian German) IPA^(key): /aˈliːs/

• Audio

  (file)

• IPA^(key): /ˈɛlɪs/

• Audio

  (file)

• IPA^(key): /aˈlɪtʃə/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: A‧li‧ce

Proper noun

Alice

1. a female given name

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /aˈli.t͡ʃe/
• Rhymes: -itʃe
• Syllabification: A‧lì‧ce

Proper noun

Alice f

1. a female given name, equivalent to English Alice

Anagrams

• Cilea, acile, calie, celai, celia, elica, laice

Norwegian

Etymology

From English Alice.

Proper noun

Alice

1. a female given name

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from English Alice.

Pronunciation

 

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /aˈli.si/

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /aˈli.si/
  • (Southern Brazil) IPA^(key): /aˈli.se/

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /ɐˈli.s(ɨ)/

Proper noun

Alice f

1. a female given name, equivalent to English Alice
2. (cryptography) Alice (an entity sending a message)

Swedish

Etymology

From English Alice. First recorded as a given name in Sweden in 1841.

Proper noun

Alice c (genitive Alices)

1. a female given name

References

• Roland Otterbjörk: Svenska förnamn, Almqvist & Wiksell 1996, →ISBN
• [2] Statistiska centralbyrån and Sture Allén, Staffan Wåhlin, Förnamnsboken, Norstedts 1995, →ISBN: 32 481 females with the given name Alice living in Sweden on December 31st, 2010, with frequency peaks in the 19th century and in the 2000s decade. Accessed on 19 June 2011.

Tagalog

Etymology

From English Alice.

Proper noun

Alice

1. a female given name from English