See Also: secondary homonym(medicine)
homonym(dictionary)
homonym(dictionary)
Homonym(medicine)
primary homonym(medicine)
junior homonym(medicine)
senior homonym(medicine)
Secondary(medicine)
secondary(dictionary)
secondary(dictionary)

indigo (iou) and secondary homonym (medicine)


indigo (iou)



indigo noun & adjective. Also indico. M16.
[Spanish indico from Latin indicum from Greek indikon, from indikos: see INDIC.]
A. noun. Pl. -os.
A dark blue powder used as a vat dye, orig. obtained from certain plants but now mainly made synthetically. Also, the chief chemical constituent of this, indigotin. M16.
b. A kind or sample of this dye. E17.
Any of various plants, esp. of the tropical leguminous genus Indigofera, from which indigo or a similar dye is obtainable. E17.
bastard indigo US a leguminous plant of the genus Amorpha, esp. A. fruticosa. false indigo (a) a leguminous plant of the genus Baptisia, esp. B. tinctoria; (b) = bastard indigo above.
A deep violet-blue, located in the spectrum between blue and violet. E17.
Comb.: indigo-bird (a) a N. American bunting, Passerina cyanea, the male of which has bright blue plumage; (b) any of several parasitic African weaver-birds of the genus Vidua and the subfamily Viduinae, the males of which have glossy plumage of a blue- or purplish-black colour; indigo bunting = indigo-bird (a) above; indigo finch = indigo-bird above; indigo plant = sense 2 above; indigo snake a large blue-black, brown, or particoloured colubrid snake, Drymarchon corais, found in the south-eastern US and tropical America; also called cribo, gopher snake; indigo white a white soluble crystalline compound, C16H12N2O2, obtained by reduction of indigotin.
b. attrib. or as adjective. Of a deep violet-blue colour. M19.

secondary homonym (medicine)


secondary homonym
<zoology> Each of two or more identical species names, which, at the time of original publication, were proposed in combination with different generic names, but which, through subsequent transference, have come to bear the same combination of generic and specific names.

See: homonym.