Ceylon

//seɪˈlɑn// name, noun

name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Tea produced in Sri Lanka. countable, uncountable
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    Former name of Sri Lanka: an island country in South Asia . archaic, historical

    "Brush supplied shunters to industrial clients, but the first significant main line order came from the Ceylon Government Railway in 1950 for 25 diesel-electrics."

  2. 2
    A male given name transferred from the place name. rare
  3. 3
    An object-oriented, strongly statically typed programming language with an emphasis on immutability.

Synonyms

All synonyms
sri lanka

Example

More examples

"As Ceylon, it became independent in 1948; its name was changed to Sri Lanka in 1972."

Etymology

Borrowed from Portuguese Ceilão, from Old French Seilan (Marco Polo), from Persian سیلان (saylān), ultimately from Pali sīhaḷa, from Sanskrit सिंहल (siṃhala). Doublet of Sinhala.

Related phrases

Ceylon gooseberryCeylon ironwoodCeylon mossCeylon teasri lanka

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.