Meaning & use
anil
A tropical shrub whose leaves were traditionally used to produce indigo dye, or the dye itself.
See it in a sentence
Before synthetic dyes existed, farmers across the region cultivated anil for its blue pigment.
The old ledger listed several barrels of anil among the goods shipped that season.
A note on using this word
Anil is now a specialist or historical term; in modern contexts 'indigo' is the far more common word for both the plant and the dye.
Words with a similar meaning
indigo
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
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