Iris can mean:

• The sphincter around the pupil of the eye, see iris (anatomy)
• The equivalent device in a camera, see iris (camera)
• The messenger of the gods in Greek mythology, see Iris (mythology)
• The genus Iris of flowering plants, and their flowers: see iris (plant)
• The Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS), now defunct, which developed the Intermedia hypertext publishing system at Brown University.
• A movie by Richard Eyre, about Iris Murdoch, see Iris (2001 movie)
• A Dutch comic magazine, see Iris magazine
• A female first name
• A Romanian heavy-metal/hard-rock band IRIS
• The asteroid 7 Iris
• Irises (painting), a painting by Vincent Van Gogh
• Iris (synthpop), a Texas based synthpop band
• I.R.I.S. Group , a Belgian company, developing OCR software
• The IRIS Consortium. Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology
• Iris (song), a song from the film City of Angels
• Iris (Stargate), a fictional device in the television show Stargate SG-1

The word iris originated as Greek for rainbow.