Carambola brightly colored and unusually shaped fruits, as well as for their attractive dark green leaves and their lavender to pink flowers. Like the bilimbi, the juice of the more acidic sour types can be used to clean rusty or tarnished metal (especially brass) as well as bleach rust stains from cloth. They may also be used as a mordant in dyeing. The Portuguese word "carambola", first known use 1598, was taken from Marathi "karambal" derived from Sanskrit "karmaphala". The carambola is known under different names in different countries. It should not be confused with the closely related bilimbi, with which
Common name coin (and put into common use) comprehensive, useful, authoritative, and standardised lists of new names. The purpose typically is: Other attempts to reconcile differences between widely separated regions, traditions, and languages, by arbitrarily imposing nomenclature, often reflect narrow perspectives and have unfortunate outcomes. For example, members of the genus "Burhinus" occur in Australia, Southern Africa, Eurasia, and South America. A recent trend in field manuals and bird lists is to use the name "thick-knee" for members of the genus. This, in spite of the fact that the majority of the species occur in non-English-speaking regions and have various common names,