Password

A verbal sign given to gain passage or admittance. Its applications include war-time use by soldiers to recognize their comrades, peace-time use by spies, use to enter private clubs, and use to access machine-stored information or programmes by entering into computers. In computer usage the keyed-in password (until fifth generation computers accept verbal commands) can be one or more words or any string of characters: alphabetic, numeric, symbolic; and in any combination.