Word.ws English Dictionary

index

UK/ˈɪndɛks/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

California/ˈɪndɛks/

index noun: an alphabetical listing of items and their location.

index: an alphabetical listing of items and their location
Image: Unknown engraver, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

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

  1. 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.
    • This encyclopedia includes a topical index.
  2. The index finger; the forefinger.
  3. A movable finger on a gauge, scale, etc.
    Synonyms:
    pointer
  4. A symbol resembling a pointing hand, used to direct particular attention to a note or paragraph.
    Synonyms:
    manicule
  5. That which points out; that which shows, indicates, manifests, or discloses.
    • Among the gravity indexes is the severance of diplomatic relations.
    • Tastes are the Indexes of the different Qualities of Plants.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
    Synonyms:
    indicator
  6. A sign; an indication; a token.
    • His son's empty guffaws […] struck him with pain as the indices of a weak mind.1887, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Misadventures of John Nicholson
    • Their use of these words as epithets is an index of an appallingly low level of feminist awareness.1984 December 22, Gayle Rubin, “Censored: Anti-Porn Laws And Women's Liberation”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 23, page 8
  7. 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.
  8. A single number calculated from an array of prices or of quantities.
  9. 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.1963, Richard Feynman, “Chapter 26, Optics: The Principle of Least Time”, in The Feynman Lectures on Physics, volume I
  10. A raised suffix indicating a power.
  11. (especially) An integer or other key indicating the location of data, e.g. within an array, vector, database table, associative array, or hash table.
  12. A data structure that improves the performance of operations on a table.
  13. (index of a subgroup) The number of cosets that exist.
    • The index of 2ℤ in ℤ is 2.
  14. (obsolete) A prologue indicating what follows.
    • Ay me, what act, that roars so loud and thunders in the index?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...

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To arrange an index for something, especially a long text.
    • MySQL does not index short words and common words.
  2. To inventory; to take stock.
  3. To normalise in order to account for inflation; to correct for inflation by linking to a price index in order to maintain real levels.
  4. 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.2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian
  5. (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.2008, Haruko Minegishi Cook, Socializing Identities Through Speech Style, page 22
  6. To access a value in a data container by an index.
  7. (transitive) To use a mechanism to move an object to a precise location.

Proper noun capitalized: Index

Index

  1. An unincorporated community in Miller County, Arkansas.
  2. An unincorporated community in Morgan County, Kentucky.
  3. A ghost town in Cass County, Missouri.
  4. A small hamlet in Otsego County, New York.
  5. An unincorporated community in King George County, Virginia.
  6. A town in Snohomish County, Washington.
  7. An unincorporated community in Gilmer County, West Virginia.

index meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

index in Hindi

alphabetical listing of items
अनुक्रम anukram

index in Tamil

alphabetical listing of items
அட்டவணை aṭṭavaṇai

index in Urdu

index
اشاریہ išāriyah, فہرست fihrist

index in Bengali

alphabetical listing of items
সূচী śuci
More languagesFewer languages
index in Telugu
సూచిక sūcika, విషయ సూచిక viṣaya sūcika
index in Malayalam
സൂചിക sūcika
index in Kannada
ಸೂಚಿ sūci
index in Punjabi
ਤਤਕਰਾ tatkrā
index in Gujarati
અનુક્રમણિકા anukramṇikā
index in Assamese
তালিকা talika
index in Tagalog
talaturuan
index in Arabic
دَلِيل dalīl, فِهْرِس fihris
index in Malay
indeks
index in Indonesian
indeks
index in Persian
نمایه namâye, فهرست fehrest, شاخص šâxes, نمودار nemudâr
index in Thai
ดัชนี datchanee
index in Vietnamese
chỉ số, chỉ mục

Examples of index in a sentence

  • An array of bytes uses its index as the offset, of words a multiple thereof.
  • The subscript numbers after each element are the indices of that element.
  • The header includes an index, an identifier, and a pointer to the next entry.

All 40 example sentences with index

Synonyms of index

4 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of index

Forms of index

Noun
pluralindexes
pluralindices
plural (obsolete)index's
Verb
third-person singular presentindexes
present participleindexing
past participleindexed
pastindexed

Past tense of index: indexed

Plural of index: indexes or indices

Origin of index

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

Words formed from index

Phrases with index

41 more phrasesFewer phrases

Questions about index

What does index mean?
Index means an alphabetical listing of items and their location.
What is index in Hindi?
Index in Hindi is अनुक्रम (anukram). See Index meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is index?
Index can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce index?
Index is pronounced /ˈɪndɛks/ (UK).
What is the plural of index?
The plural of index is indexes.

Words near index in the dictionary

  1. indevoutness
  2. indew
  3. indewed
  4. indewing
  5. indews
  6. index
  7. index card
  8. index cards
  9. index case
  10. index cases
  11. index digit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: index (page history and authors); Index (page history and authors); اشاریہ (Urdu) (page history and authors); സൂചിക (Malayalam) (page history and authors); ਤਤਕਰਾ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); અનુક્રમણિકા (Gujarati) (page history and authors); তালিকা (Assamese) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-index.ogg.

Cite this entry: “index.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/index. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.