blacks

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of black.

   The artist mixed three different blacks to deepen the shadows.

   Under the gallery lights, these two blacks look almost identical.

   Note

   What the plural counts depends on which noun it comes from. As a color or pigment, black becomes countable when kinds are compared, so a painter's blacks are distinct shades or paints. Used of people, the plural noun is often heard as offensive. Adjective phrasing such as Black people is the safer choice, with Black usually capitalized.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of black.

   The cobbler blacks each pair of shoes before returning them to the customer.

   She blacks the iron grate every Saturday so it never rusts.

   Note

   The present-tense -s form of a verb that always takes an object: someone blacks a grate, a boot, a face. Besides blackening and applying blacking, British usage gives it a labor meaning, to boycott, as when a union blacks a firm's goods during a dispute. The spelling is shared with the plural noun, but a following object marks the verb.

3. 3
   noun

   Garments that are black, especially those worn as a sign of mourning.

   The widow kept to her blacks for a full year after the burial.

   Stagehands move through the wings in their blacks so the audience never sees them.

   Note

   Here mourning becomes a plural noun that names the outward show of grief rather than any single garment. Thomas North in 1579 writes of the full time men used to wear blackes for their fathers. Bacon's essay Of Death (1625) sets blacks beside weeping friends and obsequies as the trappings that make death terrible. People wear it, and it stays plural.

4. 4
   noun

   A type of ink used in copperplate printing, made from the charred husks of grapes and the residue left by the wine press.

   The printer ground his blacks to a fine paste before pulling the first proof.

   The richest blacks came from husks that had been charred slowly over a low fire.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4