Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An indigo plant or the blue dye obtained from it.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A derivative of aniline containing the group NC6H5.
  • noun A Cuban name of the blue variety of the vaqueta, a bass-like fish of the West Indies, Hypoplectrus unicolor (variety indigo of Poey).
  • noun A somewhat woody leguminous plant, Indigoferȧ Anil, from whose leaves and stalks the West Indian indigo is made.
  • noun Indigo.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A West Indian plant (Indigofera anil), one of the original sources of indigo; also, the indigo dye.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The indigo shrub; or the indigo dye obtained from the plant.
  • noun organic chemistry Any imine in which the N-radical is a phenyl (or substituted phenyl) group.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a blue dye obtained from plants or made synthetically
  • noun shrub of West Indies and South America that is a source of indigo dye

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Portuguese, from Arabic an-nīl, the indigo plant : al-, the + Persian nīl (from Sanskrit nīlī, from nīla-, dark blue).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle French anil, Portuguese anil.

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