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Portal vs Index - What's the difference?

portal | index |

As nouns the difference between portal and index

is that portal is portal (grandiose and often lavish entrance) while index is index.

portal

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A grandiose and often lavish entrance.
  • * Milton
  • Thick with sparkling orient gems / The portal shone.
  • An entrance, entry point, or means of entry.
  • The local library, a portal of knowledge.
  • (Internet) A website that acts as an entrance to other websites on the Internet.
  • The new medical portal has dozens of topical categories containing links to hundreds of sites.
  • (anatomy) A short vein that carries blood into the liver.
  • (fiction) A magical or technological leading to another location, period in time or dimension.
  • (architecture) A lesser gate, where there are two of different dimensions.
  • (architecture) Formerly, a small square corner in a room separated from the rest of an apartment by wainscoting, forming a short passage to another apartment.
  • (bridge-building) The space, at one end, between opposite trusses when these are terminated by inclined braces.
  • A prayer book or breviary; a portass.
  • Derived terms

    * nonportal

    Adjective

    (-)
  • (anatomy) Of or relating to a porta, especially the porta of the liver.
  • the portal vein

    Anagrams

    *

    See also

    * porthole * porch ----

    index

    English

    (wikipedia index)

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • An alphabetical listing of items and their location.
  • The index of a book lists words or expressions and the pages of the book upon which they are to be found.
  • The index finger; the forefinger.
  • A movable finger on a gauge, scale, etc.
  • (printing) A symbol resembling a pointing hand, used to direct particular attention to a note or paragraph.
  • That which points out; that which shows, indicates, manifests, or discloses.
  • * Arbuthnot
  • Tastes are the indexes of the different qualities of plants.
  • A sign; an indication; a token.
  • * Robert Louis Stevenson
  • His son's empty guffaws struck him with pain as the indices of a weak mind.
  • (linguistics) A type of noun where the meaning of the form changes with respect to the context. E.g., 'Today's newspaper' is an indexical form since its referent will differ depending on the context. See also icon and symbol.
  • (economics) A single number calculated from an array of prices or of quantities.
  • (science) A number representing a property or ratio, a coefficient.
  • (mathematics) A raised suffix indicating a power.
  • (programming, computing) An integer or other key indicating the location of data e.g. within an array, vector, database table, associative array, or hash table.
  • (computing, databases) A data structure that improves the performance of operations on a table.
  • (obsolete) A prologue indicating what follows.
  • (Shakespeare)

    Synonyms

    * (index finger) arrow-finger, demonstrator, forefinger, index finger, insignitor, lickpot, pointling, showing finger, teacher * See also

    Derived terms

    * index locorum * index nominum * index rerum * index term * index verborum * indexic * indexical * indexless * price index * refractive index

    References

    *

    See also

    * (alphabetical listing) table of contents

    Verb

    (es)
  • To arrange an index for something, especially a long text.
  • To inventory, to take stock.
  • Derived terms

    * indexer