EAST INDIES

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does East Indies mean? 

• EAST INDIES (noun)
  The noun EAST INDIES has 1 sense:

1. a group of islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans between Asia and Australia

  Familiarity information: EAST INDIES used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EAST INDIES (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A group of islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans between Asia and Australia

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

East India; East Indies; Malay Archipelago

Instance hypernyms:

archipelago (a group of many islands in a large body of water)

Meronyms (parts of "East Indies"):

Sunda Islands (a chain of islands in the western Malay Archipelago)

Borneo; Kalimantan (3rd largest island in the world; in the western Pacific to the north of Java; largely covered by dense jungle and rain forest; part of the Malay Archipelago)

Meronyms (members of "East Indies"):

East Indian (a native or inhabitant of the East Indies)

Malay; Malayan (a member of a people inhabiting the northern Malay Peninsula and Malaysia and parts of the western Malay Archipelago)

Domain member region:

curry ((East Indian cookery) a pungent dish of vegetables or meats flavored with curry powder and usually eaten with rice)

Holonyms ("East Indies" is a part of...):

Pacific; Pacific Ocean (the largest ocean in the world)

 Context examples 

I wish he may go to the East Indies, that I may have my shawl.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

He was in the Trafalgar action, and has been in the East Indies since; he was stationed there, I believe, several years.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

"That is to say," cried Marianne contemptuously, "he has told you, that in the East Indies the climate is hot, and the mosquitoes are troublesome."

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

But repeating his visits often, expressing his joy to find I me in good health, asking, whether I were now settled for life? adding, that he intended a voyage to the East Indies in two months, at last he plainly invited me, though with some apologies, to be surgeon of the ship; that I should have another surgeon under me, beside our two mates; that my salary should be double to the usual pay; and that having experienced my knowledge in sea-affairs to be at least equal to his, he would enter into any engagement to follow my advice, as much as if I had shared in the command.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It did not surprise me, therefore, that we should find the large room in which we supped crowded with naval men, but I remember that what did cause me some astonishment was to observe that all these sailors, who had served under the most varying conditions in all quarters of the globe, from the Baltic to the East Indies, should have been moulded into so uniform a type that they were more like each other than brother is commonly to brother.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Fanny, William must not forget my shawl if he goes to the East Indies; and I shall give him a commission for anything else that is worth having.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I have crossed the Atlantic four times, and have been once to the East Indies, and back again, and only once; besides being in different places about home: Cork, and Lisbon, and Gibraltar.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

It would not be proper, for some reasons, to trouble the reader with the particulars of our adventures in those seas; let it suffice to inform him, that in our passage from thence to the East Indies, we were driven by a violent storm to the north-west of Van Diemen’s Land.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)