anil

Etymology

It is borrowed from French anil or Portuguese anil,^[2][3][4] which is also Spanish añil;^[2] Klein and the American Heritage Dictionary name the Portuguese word alone.^[5][6] The Portuguese word comes from the Arabic for "the indigo",^[6][3][5][7] formed from the definite article, assimilated to the following consonant, and نيل (nīl, “indigo”).^[3][5][2][1] The Arabic word, shared with Persian, comes from a Sanskrit word for indigo and the indigo plant,^[2][3][5][6] derived from Sanskrit नील (nīla, “dark blue”).^[2][5][1] Klein compares lilac, from the same Persian word.^[5] The chemical sense is a separate formation in the international scientific vocabulary, from aniline,^[8][9] a word itself derived from anil.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The indigo dye: 1581, in an Act of Parliament of the 23rd year of Elizabeth I.^[2] Etymonline dates the word to the 1580s,^[3] Dictionary.com to 1575–85,^[10] and Collins to the 16th century.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The word first named the dye, and later, from 1712, the plant it comes from:^[2] the OED notes that it was the native name of the East Indian indigo, Indigofera tinctoria, while botanists use it for the West Indian species, Indigofera anil.^[2] The Shorter Oxford marks the sense "indigo shrub" as obsolete, used from the early to the mid 18th century,^[4] but Johnson (1755) defined anil as the shrub from whose leaves and stalks indigo is made,^[11] and modern dictionaries use it for a Caribbean shrub that is a source of indigo.^[7][3] In chemistry, from 1894, an anil is a compound derived from aniline.^[8][4]

Timeline

• 1581 – the indigo dye.^[2][4]
• 1712 – the indigo plant.^[2][4]
• 1894 – in chemistry, a compound derived from aniline.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A shrub of the pea family, Indigofera suffruticosa, of the Caribbean, from which indigo is obtained.^[7][2][3]
2. The indigo dye.^[2][4][1]
3. (chemistry) A Schiff base or imine derived from an aromatic amine, especially from aniline.^[8][4][1]

Related words

• aniline
• lilac

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. (1961), Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.