gray

Of a color between black and white, having neutral hue and intermediate brightness.

Adjective

  1. Of a color between black and white, having neutral hue and intermediate brightness.

    Synonyms: grayish grizzly gray / grey grayey / greyey grayish / greyish griseous grisescent hoary

  2. Dreary, gloomy, cloudy.
    • the era of gray, boring banality and stagnation - 1980, Daniel C. Gerould, Stanisław I. Witkiewicz, The Beelzebub Sonata: Plays, Essays, Documents:
    • It's a pretty grey outlook for England if these are a sample of the mothers of the coming generation. - 1927, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados Mysteries:

    Synonyms: bleak sombre cheerless comfortless dark morose depressing desolate dire disconsolate dismal doleful dolesome drear drearisome dreary dreich forlorn gayless gray gloomsome gloomy grim joyless

  3. Of indistinct, disputed or uncertain quality or acceptability.

    Synonyms: fuzzy wooly ambiguous equivocal generic gray imperspicuous imprecise indeterminate indefinite indistinct murky nebulous turbid uncertain unclear undefined undefinable vague woolly

  4. Gray-haired.
    • I have already gone gray and lost my looks.

    Synonyms: grizzly silver-haired white-haired gray / grey gray-headed / grey-headed grey-haired / gray-haired grisly grizzled hoary mouldy silvery-haired

  5. Old.
    • Two hours, whose mighty circle did embrace More time than might make grey the infant world, Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space: […] - 1817 December, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Revolt of Islam. […]”, in [Mary]...
    • In a subculture that idealizes youth, being gay and gray does not exactly make one a hot ticket. Older gays and lesbians often relegate themselves to separate and unequal meeting places. - 2004, Betty Berzon, Permanent...

    Synonyms: cobwebbed hoary ancient aged age-old antediluvian auld cobwebby decrepit eld eldern gamol gray moss-grown old old as the hills old as the Pyramids olden older than dirt older than the hills older than the Pyramids venerable wintry

  6. Relating to older people.
    • the gray dollar
    • February 8, 1800, Fisher Ames, Eulogy on Washington Gray experience listened to his counsels with respect, and, at a time when youth is almost privileged to be rash, Virginia committed the safety of her frontier, and...

    Synonyms: elder geriatric elderly gerontologic gerontological long in the tooth matured of a certain age old as Methuselah on in years over the hill senior superannuated ivy-covered preserved wintry

Origin

From Middle English gray, from Old English grǣġ (West Saxon). The spelling gray reflects the West Saxon vowel development, whereas the variant grey stems from the Anglian form grēġ (through Middle English grey). Further derived from Proto-West Germanic *grāu, from Proto-Germanic *grēwaz (“grey”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰreh₁- (“to green, to grow”). Cognate with West Frisian grau (“grey”), Dutch grauw (“grey”), German Low German grau, graag (“grey”), German grau (“grey”), Swedish grå (“grey”), Icelandic grár (“grey”), Latin rāvus (“tawny, grey”), Old Church Slavonic зьрѭ (zĭrjǫ, “to see, to glance”), archaic Russian зреть (zretʹ, “to watch, to look at”), Lithuanian žeriù (“to shine”).

Forms

grayer more gray grayest most gray grey

Derived

all cats are gray at night all cats are gray in the dark ash gray ash-gray ash-gray leaf bug back gray battleship-gray battleship gray blackish-gray antshrike blue-gray cadet gray cool gray dove gray eastern gray kangaroo eastern gray squirrel get gray hair from give gray hair to give someone gray hair gray-A gray ace gray alien gray amber gray ammonia gray angelfish

Noun US

  1. An achromatic colour between black and white.
  2. An animal or thing of grey colour, such as a horse, badger, or salmon.
  3. A gray wolf
    • Caywood holds the rifle which time after time brought down a raging, snarling prairie gray. - 1939, Arthur Hawthorne Carhart, quoting Bill Caywood, “World Champion Wolfer”, in Outdoor Life, volume 84, number 3:
  4. A gray whale, Eschrichtius robustus.
    • Log-shaped barnacles become embedded in the hide of the gray. - 1971 Mar, National Geographic, page 411:
  5. Synonym of grey alien.

    Synonyms: grey alien

  6. A penny with a tail on both sides, used for cheating.

Forms

grays grey

Derived

shades of gray

Noun US

  1. In the International System of Units, the derived unit of absorbed dose of radiation (radiation absorbed by a patient); one joule of energy absorbed per kilogram of the patient's mass.

    Coordinate Terms: rad

    Related: mul:Gy

Origin

Named after English physicist Louis Harold Gray (1905–1965).

Forms

grays grey

Derived

centigray kilogray microgray milligray

Verb

  1. To turn gray.
    • My hair is beginning to gray.
  2. To turn progressively older, alluding to graying of hair through aging (used in context of the population of a geographic region)
    • the graying of America
    • It’s not what advocates of retrofitting the suburbs may have had in mind, but it’s a logical outcome of the graying of America, and of suburbia in particular. - 2018 September 18, Amanda Kolson Hurley, “Fake Public...
  3. To give a soft effect to (a photograph) by covering the negative while printing with a ground-glass plate.

Forms

grays graying grayed grey