Indigo

How to spell indigo

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce indigo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does indigo mean?

1. nounA deep blue-violet colour, or the natural dye that produces it.
2. adjectiveHaving a deep blue-violet colour.

Indigo in a sentence

• noun

  The artist mixed a touch of indigo into the night sky.

• adjective

  She wore an indigo scarf that matched the evening light.

• noun

  Traditional denim gets its rich blue tone from indigo.

• adjective

  The walls were painted a calming indigo shade.

Where does indigo come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek indikon, which literally meant 'Indian dye' or 'substance from India', since the deep blue colourant was originally imported from the Indian subcontinent. The Greeks built that word on Indikos, meaning 'of India', and the Romans took it as indicum. The term travelled into modern European languages through Spanish and Portuguese indigo during the trading boom of the 1500s, when the dye became a hugely valuable commodity. English adopted indigo in the late sixteenth century, and the spelling kept the bright, simple look of the Romance form. Because the word is essentially the country name India in disguise, remembering that connection helps fix the in-di-go pattern, with no doubled letters and a plain single g.

How the word is built

• indic- (from Latin indicum: Indian dye, ultimately from India)
• -o (noun ending)