Bombay
Americannoun
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the former English name of Mumbai
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a breed of black short-haired medium-sized cat
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India's second-largest city, after Calcutta, Bombay is the only natural deep-water harbor in western India.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Prakash says their exhibition is titled "Bombay Framed" rather than "Mumbai Framed" simply because most of the images come from a time when the city was officially known as Bombay.
From BBC • Apr. 3, 2026
The city's name was officially changed from Bombay to Mumbai in the mid-1990s.
From BBC • Apr. 3, 2026
Yes, Gulf statelets like Aden were overseen by the Bombay presidency, and yes, the India rupee was, for the most part, their legal tender.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 30, 2026
If you were born in what once was Bombay, but raised a family in L.A., happy new year.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 27, 2025
Baba told me stories of his travels to India and Russia, the people he had met, like the armless, legless couple in Bombay who’d been married forty-seven years and raised eleven children.
From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
