index

  1. Noun.  An alphabetical listing of items and their location; for example, the index of a book lists words or expressions and the pages of the book upon which they are to be found.
  2. Noun.  The index finger, the forefinger, or other pointer.
  3. Noun.  A sign; an indication; a token.
  4. Noun.  (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.
  5. Noun.  (economics) A single number calculated from an array of prices or of quantities.
  6. Noun.  (science) A number representing a property or ratio, a coefficient.
  7. Noun.  (mathematics) A raised suffix indicating a power.
  8. Noun.  (programming, computing) An integer or other key indicating the location of data e.g. within a vector, database table, associative array, or hash table.
  9. Noun.  (computing, databases) A data structure that improves the performance of operations on a table.
  10. Verb.  (transitive) To arrange an index for something, especially a long text.
  11. Verb.  To inventory, to take stock.

This is an unmodified, but possibly outdated, definition from Wiktionary and used here under the Creative Commons license. Wiktionary is a great resource. If you like it too, please donate to Wikimedia.

This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.