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 nomenclature is a global system that attempts to denote particular organisms or taxa uniquely and , on the assumption that such organisms or taxa are well-defined and generally also have well-defined interrelationships; accordingly the ICZN has formal rules for biological nomenclature and convenes periodic international meetings to further that purpose. The form of scientific names for organisms that are called binomial nomenclature is superficially similar to the noun-adjective form of vernacular names or common names which were used by prehistoric cultures. A collective name such as "owl" was made more precise by the addition of an adjective such as "screech".