Indices

How to spell indices

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce indices

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does indices mean?

1. nounThe plural of index, used for statistical measures, market benchmarks, or pointers to information.
2. nounIn mathematics, the plural of index: the small numbers showing the power to which a quantity is raised.

Indices in a sentence

• The report compared several economic indices over the past decade.

• When multiplying powers of the same base, you add the indices.

• Global stock indices fell sharply after the announcement.

• The worksheet covered the laws of indices in detail.

Where does indices come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the Latin plural of index, a noun that originally meant a pointer or indicator and was built on the verb indicare, 'to point out' or 'to make known', itself from in- 'towards' and dicere 'to say or declare'. In classical Latin the index was literally the forefinger, the digit you point with, and the sense widened to anything that signals or reveals, including a list that points a reader to information. English borrowed index in the 1500s and, for technical and mathematical uses, kept the original Latin plural indices rather than the everyday plural indexes. That split is exactly the spelling trap: the -ex ending of index becomes -ic- before the plural -es, so the natural-sounding 'indexes' is replaced by indices, with a soft c. The same Latin dicere lies behind dictate and verdict, all rooted in the idea of declaring or pointing something out.

How the word is built

• ind- (from Latin index: pointer, indicator)
• -ices (Latin plural ending)