India

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

• A peninsula and subcontinent of southern Asia south of the Himalaya Mountains, occupied by India, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
• A country of southern Asia covering most of the Indian subcontinent. Aryans from the northwest invaded c. 1500 BC, pushing Dravidian and other peoples to the south. Most of India was unified by the emperor Asoka in the 3rd century BC. It experienced a golden age in the 4th and 5th centuries AD before being invaded c. 1000 by Muslims and later by the Mongol conqueror Baber, who established the Mughal empire (1526–1857). Various European powers established trading posts in the 16th and 17th centuries, with the British East India Company assuming authority over most of the country by the early 19th century. A widespread rebellion sparked by the mutiny of native troops in 1857 led to the establishment of direct rule by the British crown in 1858. In the 20th century, India gained its independence from Great Britain (1947) following a campaign of civil disobedience led by the pacifist Mohandas Gandhi. Its concomitant partition into the separate countries of India and Pakistan resulted in a tumultuous migration of Muslims to Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs to India in which approximately one million people died. New Delhi is the capital, and Mumbai is the largest city.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In an attributive use: Indian; pertaining to India or the East Indies; made in, named from, or connected with India: as, India goods; the India trade.

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

• noun A country in Southern Asia; the two peninsulas of Hither and Farther India; in a restricted sense, Hither India, or Hindostan.
• noun a nearly black pigment brought chiefly from China, used for water colors. It is in rolls, or in square, and consists of lampblack or ivory black and animal glue. Called also China ink. The true India ink is sepia. See Sepia.
• noun floor matting made in China, India, etc., from grass and reeds; -- also called Canton matting or China matting.
• noun a variety of Chinese paper, of smooth but not glossy surface, used for printing from engravings, woodcuts, etc.
• noun (Engraving) a proof impression from an engraved plate, taken on India paper.
• noun See Caoutchouc.
• noun (Bot.) any tree yielding caoutchouc, but especially the East Indian Ficus elastica, often cultivated for its large, shining, elliptical leaves.

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

• noun The letter I in the ICAO spelling alphabet.
• proper noun The territory east of the river Indus and south of the Himalaya mountains (formerly also known as Hindustan)
• proper noun Country in South Asia (Bharat). Official name: Republic of India.
• proper noun Formerly applied to America, also plural Indies (obsolete)
• proper noun The letter I in the ICAO spelling alphabet.

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

• noun a republic in the Asian subcontinent in southern Asia; second most populous country in the world; achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1947