Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To show the way to or the direction of; point out.
  • transitive verb To serve as a sign, symptom, or token of; signify.
  • transitive verb To suggest or demonstrate the necessity, expedience, or advisability of.
  • transitive verb To state or express briefly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To point out; show; suggest, as by an outline or a word, etc.: as, the length of a shadow indicates the time of day; to indicate a picture by a sketch.
  • Especially, to give a suggestion of; serve as a reason or ground for inferring, expecting, using, etc.; also, merely suggest; hint: as, a falling barometer indicates rain or high wind; certain symptoms indicate certain remedies in the treatment of disease.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To point out; to discover; to direct to a knowledge of; to show; to make known.
  • transitive verb (Med.) To show or manifest by symptoms; to point to as the proper remedies. Opposite of contraindicate.
  • transitive verb (Mach.) To investigate the condition or power of, as of steam engine, by means of an indicator.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To point out; to discover; to direct to a knowledge of; to show; to make known.
  • verb To show or manifest by symptoms; to point to as the proper remedies
  • verb To signal in a vehicle the desire to turn right or left
  • verb this sense?) To investigate the condition or power of, as of steam engine, by means of an indicator.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb be a signal for or a symptom of
  • verb give evidence of
  • verb to state or express briefly
  • verb suggest the necessity of an intervention; in medicine
  • verb indicate a place, direction, person, or thing; either spatially or figuratively

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin indicāre, indicāt-, to show, from index, forefinger, indicator; see deik- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin indicatus, past participle of indicare ("to point out, indicate"), from in ("in, to") + dicare ("to declare, originally to point"); see diction. Compare index.

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