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''index'' ⚬｜Definition｜1st｜20260511125421-00-⌔

index - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

index (plural indexes or indices or (obsolete, in use in the 17th century) index’s)

  • An alphabetical listing of items and their location.
    • ✤ The index of a book lists words or expressions and the pages of the book upon which they are to be found.
    • ✤ He isn’t able to find the index of the book.
  • The index finger; the forefinger.
    • ✤ Synonyms: see Thesaurus: index finger
  • A movable finger on a gauge, scale, etc.
    • ✤ Synonym: pointer
  • (typography) A symbol resembling a pointing hand, used to direct particular attention to a note or paragraph.
    • ✤ Synonyms: manicule, see others in Wikipedia at manicule § Terminology
  • That which points out; that which shows, indicates, manifests, or discloses.
    • ✤ Synonym: indicator
    • ✤ Among the gravity indexes is the severance of diplomatic relations.
    • ✤ Tastes are the Indexes of the different Qualities of Plants.1
  • A sign; an indication; a token.
    • ✤ His son’s empty guffaws […] struck him with pain as the indices of a weak mind.2
    • ✤ Their use of these words as epithets is an index of an appallingly low level of feminist awareness.3
  • (linguistics) A type of noun where the meaning of the form changes with respect to the context; e.g., ‘Today’s newspaper’ is an indexical form since its referent will differ depending on the context. See also icon and symbol.
  • (economics) A single number calculated from an array of prices or of quantities.
  • (sciences) A number representing a property or ratio; a coefficient.
    • ✤ In other words, we predict that the index for a new pair of materials can be obtained from the indexes of the individual materials, both against air or against vacuum.4
  • (mathematics) A raised suffix indicating a power.
  • (computing, especially programming and databases) An integer or other key indicating the location of data, e.g. within an array, vector, database table, associative array, or hash table.
  • (computing, databases) A data structure that improves the performance of operations on a table.
  • (algebra, index of a subgroup) The number of cosets that exist.
    • ✤ The index of 2ℤ in ℤ is 2.
  • (obsolete) A prologue indicating what follows.
    • ✤ Ay me, what act, that roars so loud and thunders in the index?5

Verb

index (third-person singular simple present indexes, present participle indexing, simple past and past participle indexed)

  • (transitive) To arrange an index for something, especially a long text.
    • ✤ MySQL does not index short words and common words.
  • To inventory; to take stock.
  • (chiefly economics) To normalise in order to account for inflation; to correct for inflation by linking to a price index in order to maintain real levels.
  • To measure by an associated value.
    • ✤ For thousands of years, human progress was indexed to the ease and speed of our mobility: our capacity to walk on two legs, and then to ride on animals, sail on boats, chug across the land and fly through the air, all to procure for ourselves the food and materials we wanted.6
  • (linguistics, transitive) To be indexical for (some situation or state of affairs); to indicate.
    • ✤ For example, the feature I indexes the current speaker in the speech event and you, the current addressee.7
  • (computing) To access a value in a data container by an index.
  • (mechanical engineering, transitive) To use a mechanism to move an object to a precise location.

Etymology

From Latin index (“a discoverer, informer, spy; of things, an indicator, the forefinger, a title, superscription”), from indicō (“point out, show”); see indicate.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation, General American, Canada) IPA: /ˈɪndɛks/
  • (California) IPA: /ˈɪndɛks/, (California Vowel Shift) [ˈɪndæks]
    • Audio (Southern California); [ˈɪndæks]: 🔊
  • (Australian) IPA: /ˈɪndeks/

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1731, John Arbuthnot, An Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments, and the Choice of Them, According to the Different Constitutions of Human Bodies. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson […], →OCLC: ↩

  2. 1887, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Misadventures of John Nicholson: ↩

  3. 1984 December 22, Gayle Rubin, “Censored: Anti-Porn Laws And Women’s Liberation”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 23, page 8: ↩

  4. 1963, Richard Feynman, “Chapter 26, Optics: The Principle of Least Time”, in The Feynman Lectures on Physics, volume I: ↩

  5. c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iv]: ↩

  6. 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian ‎: ↩

  7. 2008, Haruko Minegishi Cook, Socializing Identities Through Speech Style, page 22: ↩

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