English
rateless
From rate + -less.
Formed from rate + -less
Proto-Indo-European *h₂reh₁- ‘to think’
…
Latin prō ratā parte ‘according to a fixed part’
Medieval Latin rata
Old French rate
Middle English rate
English rate
Today it means
adj Describing a family of codes whose higher rate codes have codewords that are prefixes of those of the lower rate codes.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “rateless”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / rateless