Definitions

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

  • noun A distinguishing character or symbol written directly beneath or next to and slightly below a letter or number.
  • adjective Written beneath.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Written beneath: as, the Greek iota (ι) subscript, so written since the twelfth century in the improper diphthongs (α%26ι), (ηι), (ωι): opposed to adscript (as in Ἀι, Ἠι, Ὠι). This ι had become mute by about 200 b. c., and was sometimes written (adscript), sometimes omitted.
  • noun Something written beneath.

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

  • noun Anything written below.
  • adjective Written below or underneath. (See under iota.) Specifically (Math.), said of marks, figures, or letters (suffixes), written below and usually to the right of other letters to distinguish them. See suffix, n., 2, and subindex.

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

  • noun printing A type of lettering form written lower than the things around it.
  • noun computing A numerical index into an array.

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

  • noun a character or symbol set or printed or written beneath or slightly below and to the side of another character
  • adjective written or printed below and to one side of another character

Etymologies

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

[From Latin subscrīptus, past participle of subscrībere, to subscribe; see subscribe.]

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Examples

  • Speaking of R-si, I was amused to learn in my mechanical engineering lecture the other day that "Rsys" sys is a subscript is the numerical expression of the reliability of a system.

    Contingency Plans: Fresh Rolls, Pit Dogs, Wet Feet, and Spare Wheels BikeSnobNYC 2009

  • I will copy text * within a single document* (e.g., symbols with subscripts) and when I paste it within the same document, the formatting (of the subscript) is lost.

    Discourse.net: Word Hell 2009

  • Hansen and Quinn give us eight distinct patterns, such as “alpha followed by an epsilon becomes long alpha, alpha followed by epsilon iota becomes long alpha with an iota subscript,” and so on, for eight impossible to memorize (at least for me) rules.

    greek is hard « paper fruit 2009

  • Hansen and Quinn give us eight distinct patterns, such as “alpha followed by an epsilon becomes long alpha, alpha followed by epsilon iota becomes long alpha with an iota subscript,” and so on, for eight impossible to memorize (at least for me) rules.

    2009 January « paper fruit 2009

  • The new equation editor, subscript, and superscript tools make it possible for math and science teachers and their students to use Google Docs for more of their document creations.

    Google Docs Adds Academic Features Mr. Byrne 2009

  • There is a new subscript and superscript tool that can be used in writing chemical compounds and mathematics equations.

    Archive 2009-09-28 Mr. Byrne 2009

  • All that is missing for notation is the subscript S on the integration sign to designate surface integral; and this is not particularly unusual or exceptional.

    Rabett Run EliRabett 2009

  • There is a new subscript and superscript tool that can be used in writing chemical compounds and mathematics equations.

    Google Docs Adds Academic Features Mr. Byrne 2009

  • It's simply that Arthur's notation is standard and identical in every respect to what Wolfram does -- excepting only the omission of the subscript S on the integral sign to help underline that it is a surface integral.

    Rabett Run EliRabett 2009

  • There's NO notation difference from the Wolfram reference, apart from using "x" rather than "a" as the integration variable to identify a point on the surface, and omitting the subscript "S" on the integration sign.

    Rabett Run EliRabett 2009

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