gray
Forms
- Comparative
- grayer
- Superlative
- grayest
- Plural
- grays
- present (v1)
- gray
- past (v2)
- grayed
- past participle (v3)
- grayed
- present participle
- graying
- 3rd person singular
- grays
Definitions
1.Of a color between black and white, having neutral hue and intermediate brightness.
2.Dreary, gloomy, cloudy.
- It's a pretty grey outlook for England if these are a sample of the mothers of the coming generation.
3.Of indistinct, disputed or uncertain quality or acceptability.
4.Gray-haired.
- I have already gone gray and lost my looks.
1.To give a soft effect to (a photograph) by covering the negative while printing with a ground-glass plate.
2.To turn gray.
- My hair is beginning to gray.
3.To turn progressively older, alluding to graying of hair through aging (used in context of the population of a geographic region)(slang)
- 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.
1.An achromatic colour between black and white.
Frequency
Overall
Uncommon· #2288
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Uncommon
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Uncommon
Etymology
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”).