ruby

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A clear, deep, red variety of corundum, valued as a precious stone.

   “They respond instantly to the faintest rustling in the covert of a sheaf of Ulysses S. Grants, or the homely, rustic tinkle of a wheelbarrow full of rubies being jounced along over a nightclub floor.”

   “Although there are dozens of different types of gems, among the best known and most important are diamond, ruby and sapphire, emerald and other gem forms of the mineral beryl, chrysoberyl, tanzanite, tsavorite, topaz and jade.”

2. (countable, uncountable)A deep red colour.

   “When now I thinke you can behold such sights, / And keepe the naturall Rubie of your Cheekes, / When mine is blanch'd with feare.”

3. (countable, uncountable)The tincture red or gules.

   “Elgin. Topaz a Saltier and Chief Ruby, on a Canton Pearl a Lyon Rampant Saphyr, which last is their paternal Coat; and the Field Topaz, and Saltier, and Chief Ruby, was the Arms of King Robert the Bruce, they altering the Field from Pearl (as he bore it) to Topaz.”

   “The Field is Ruby, on a Bend Topaz, three Martlets Diamond. [...] Checkie Topaz and Saphire, a Fesse within a Bordure Ruby, by the Name of Clifford.”

   “(1) Pearl, a Cross, Ruby, with the Effigies of our Saviour thereon, Topaz, born in Memory of one of the Family's fighting against the Turks. (2) Topaz, a Chief Indented, Saphire. (3) Ruby, three covered Cups, Topaz [...]”

4. (countable, uncountable)A ruby hummer, a South American hummingbird, Clytolaema rubricauda.
5. (countable, uncountable)A red bird-of-paradise, Paradisaea rubra.
6. (UK, dated, uncountable)The size of type between pearl and nonpareil, standardized as 5½-point.
7. (countable, uncountable)A pronunciation guide written above or beside Chinese characters.
8. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)A red spinel.
9. (alt-of, slang)Alternative letter-case form of Ruby (“curry”).
10. (Cockney, slang)A curry; ellipsis of Ruby Murray.

    “We're going down the Indian for a Ruby; wanna join us?”

    “No matter if you're Asian, Arab or Eskimo, everyone loves a ruby.”

adj

1. Of a deep, red color; ruby-red.

verb

1. (poetic, transitive)To make red; to redden.

   “With sanguine drops the walls are rubied”

name

1. A female given name.

   “Ruby, my dear / Hold back that tear / I know he's gone / Your love has flown”

   “And those are her two daughters, Opal and Ruby. Her husband, Joshua, named them. He said they were to be the jewels of his old age. She would never have thought of names like that. There wasn't an ounce of sentiment in her body.”

2. (rare)A surname.
3. (rare)A male given name.
4. A dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language developed in the 1990s.

   “The final thrust of Bob's argument is that if you strip away all disk I/O (and he cites the move to SSD persistent storage), we'll shift away from interpreted languages such as Ruby and PHP and back to Java.”

   “Ruby began life in Japan as the creation of Yukihiro Matsumoto, known more commonly as Matz. Unlike that of most language developers, Matz's motivation for Ruby was fun and a principle of “least surprise,” in order to improve overall developer productivity.”

5. A city in Alaska.
6. A ghost town in Arizona.
7. A town in South Carolina.
8. A town in Wisconsin.
9. A settlement on the island of Saint Croix in the United States Virgin Islands.
10. A locality in South Gippsland Shire, south eastern Victoria, Australia.