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  • io
    io
    noun
    a small, solitary hawk, Buteo solitarius, having two plumage phases and breeding only on the Island of Hawaii, where it is a rare species and the only indigenous bird of prey: classified as near threatened.
  • Io
    Io
    noun
    a woman who, being loved by Zeus, was transformed into a white heifer and was, at the wish of Hera, first guarded by Argus and later pursued through the world by a gadfly until she reached Egypt, where she resumed her true shape: identified by the Egyptians with Isis.
  • Io.
    Io.
    abbreviation
    Iowa.
  • I/O
  • I.O.
    I.O.
    abbreviation
    indirect object.

io

1 American  
[ee-oh] / ˈi oʊ /
Or 'io

noun

ios plural
  1. a small, solitary hawk, Buteo solitarius, having two plumage phases and breeding only on the Island of Hawaii, where it is a rare species and the only indigenous bird of prey: classified as near threatened.


Io 2 American  
[ahy-oh, ee-oh] / ˈaɪ oʊ, ˈi oʊ /

noun

  1. Classical Mythology. a woman who, being loved by Zeus, was transformed into a white heifer and was, at the wish of Hera, first guarded by Argus and later pursued through the world by a gadfly until she reached Egypt, where she resumed her true shape: identified by the Egyptians with Isis.

  2. Astronomy. a large volcanically active moon of the planet Jupiter.


Io 3 American  
[ahy-oh, ee-oh] / ˈaɪ oʊ, ˈi oʊ /

noun

Ios plural
  1. Io moth.


Io 4 American  
Symbol, Chemistry.
  1. ionium.


Io. 5 American  

abbreviation

  1. Iowa.


I/O 6 American  
I.O. 7 American  
Or IO,

abbreviation

  1. indirect object.


Io 1 British  
/ ˈaɪəʊ /

noun

  1. the innermost of the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter, displaying intense volcanic activity. Diameter: 3640 km; orbital radius: 422 000 km

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

io 2 British  

abbreviation

  1. British Indian Ocean Territory

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Io 3 British  

symbol

  1. ionium

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

I/O 4 British  

abbreviation

  1. input/output

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Io 5 British  
/ ˈaɪəʊ /

noun

  1. Greek myth a maiden loved by Zeus and turned into a white heifer by either Zeus or Hera

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Io Scientific  
/ īō,ēō /
  1. One of the four brightest satellites of Jupiter and the fifth in distance from the planet. It was first sighted by Galileo.

  2. See Note at moon


Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

Etymology

Origin of io

From Hawaiian ʿio

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.

See Examples For:

Tan spent 24 years at Apple, most recently as vice president of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch, before co-founding io Products, which OpenAI acquired for roughly $6.5 billion in 2025.

From Barron's Jul. 10, 2026

Along with OpenAI, Apple is suing io Products, the design startup founded by Jony Ive, a long-time Apple executive.

From BBC Jul. 10, 2026

Tan left Apple to found io Products alongside Jony Ive, Apple’s former chief design officer, and other leaders.

From MarketWatch Jul. 10, 2026

OpenAI started its consumer-hardware division last May by acquiring io for $6.5 billion in stock.

From The Wall Street Journal May 5, 2026

Wasn't quite midday so the heat wasn’t overbearing and there weren’t no heat waves across the fields io make the eye see things funny.

From "Life Is So Good" by George Dawson

This effect is dramatic on Io, Jupiter's innermost large moon, where intense gravitational stretching drives constant volcanic eruptions.

From Science Daily Jan. 7, 2026

“Juno had two really close flybys of Io during Juno’s extended mission,” Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, the mission’s principal investigator, said in a statement.

From Salon Feb. 3, 2025

The spacecraft produced the first high-resolution images of the four planets, the rings of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, lightning on Jupiter and lava lakes that revealed active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io.

From New York Times Jun. 14, 2024

New images of Jupiter's volcano-studded moon Io, taken by the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham in Arizona, offer the highest resolution of Io ever achieved with an Earth-based instrument.

From Science Daily May 30, 2024

But this thin atmosphere can serve a useful purpose, because it may be just thick enough to protect the surface from the intense charged particles in the Jupiter radiation belt in which Io is embedded.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

They are, however, frequently abbreviated thus: Iowa, Ia. or Io.;

From Higher Lessons in English A work on English grammar and composition by Kellogg, Brainerd

The I/O event was “almost entirely commercially driven,” according to Windsor.

From MarketWatch May 20, 2026

The order is for production of wafer-level test and burn-in of silicon photonics integrated circuits, used in data center optical interconnects and emerging optical I/O architectures for AI processors, according to Aehr.

From Barron's Apr. 3, 2026

During an onstage interview at Google’s I/O conference in May, Brin said he stayed very involved.

From The Wall Street Journal Jan. 7, 2026

In the months leading up to I/O, search engine optimization experts found that the Google Search algorithm had made some drastic updates.

From Slate May 16, 2024

In Great Britain, `fred', `jim' and `sheila' are common metasyntactic variables because their uppercase versions were official names given to the 3 memory areas that held I/O status registers on the lovingly-remembered BBC Microcomputer!

From The Jargon File, Version 4.2.2, 20 Aug 2000 by Steele, Guy L.

The senior coalition officer said the insurgents who supported the Qatar process “didn’t do a good I.O. campaign to sell it to their people.”

From New York Times Oct. 2, 2012

Mr. Green next day notified the Canadian Trades and Labor Congress that it must expel 30,000 C. I.O. members or renounce 120,000 A. F. of L. members.

From Time Magazine Archive

Between A. F. of L. and C. I.O. there still exists a thin, technical tie: the rebellious C. I. O. unions were suspended last year but they have not yet been expelled.

From Time Magazine Archive

To these three the President added Sidney Hillman, pink-cheeked, blond, curly-haired, 53, chief of Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, vice president of C. I.O., a "labor statesman," no bumbler, coldly intellectual.

From Time Magazine Archive

Prepare to cut recitations, cut prayers, cut lectures,—ay, to cut even the President himself.—Oration before H.L. of I.O. of O.F.

From A Collection of College Words and Customs by Hall, Benjamin Homer

Preparations are under way to repatriate the remains of two teenagers from Dublin who died in separate incidents on the Greek island of Ios over the weekend.

From BBC Jul. 4, 2023

But, since the 1970s, Ios has been known, primarily, for one thing.

From New York Times Aug. 24, 2022

In October, they interrogated a submarine cable that connects the islands of Santorini and Ios.

From Science Magazine Dec. 8, 2021

Last summer, I had lunch in a beach-side taverna on the island of Ios, which I had last visited when it was a hippy haven in the 1970s.

From BBC Jul. 24, 2015

Certain central Aegean islands, Antiparos, Ios, Amorgos, Syros and Siphnos, were all found to be singularly rich in evidence of the middle-Aegean period.

From The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia Volume 1 of 28 by Project Gutenberg

This week the app overtook WeChat and TikTok to become the most-downloaded app for Apple and ios devices in China, though its popularity is not entirely due to merit.

From The Guardian Feb. 15, 2019

There are a lot of closeups and  difficult-to-decipher geometry, but the intent here is clear — Sony is ios going to show us what the PS4 actually looks like.

From Forbes May 20, 2013

Android is much better, in my opinion, because it is not afraid to make drastic changes to its system. ios has looked similar since the start.

From Time Apr. 21, 2013

Only the brooding golden backlighting that makes theaters out of Parrish's scenar ios bespeaks a pre-neon sensibility.

From Time Magazine Archive

The price is 28,000 10000 in fives and ios 18000 50 and zoos.

From Time Magazine Archive

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