# gray

Pronunciation: say "GRAY" /ɡɹeɪ/

## Adjective

1. Of the color of ash or lead, a neutral shade lying between black and white.
   - Simple: Having a color between black and white, like a rainy sky or wet stone.
   - _He chose a gray suit for the job interview._
   - _The old church had thick gray stone walls and tall, narrow windows._
3. Falling in an unclear middle zone where quality or acceptability is uncertain or disputed.
   - Simple: Not clearly right or wrong, and hard to judge as good or bad.
   - _The ethics of the experiment remained gray for years._
   - _Tax law in this region is famously gray and open to argument._
4. Dreary, gloomy, or overcast.
   - Simple: Dull, gloomy, and without much light, like a cloudy day.
   - _November brought one gray afternoon after another._
   - _The town felt gray and lifeless after the factory closed._
5. Having gray hair with age; old; or relating to older people as a group.
   - Simple: Having gray hair from age, being old, or having to do with older people.
   - _The gray old sailor told stories from his youth._
   - _She went completely gray by the age of fifty._

## Noun

2. Any neutral color without hue that falls in the range between black and white.
   - Simple: A color that is a mix of black and white, with no other color in it.
   - _This shade of gray works well for a calm bedroom._
   - _Designers often favor cool grays in modern offices._
7. Any gray animal or object, for example a gray horse, badger, or salmon.
   - Simple: An animal or thing that is gray in color, such as a horse or fish.
   - _She entered her favorite gray in the county show._
   - _The anglers landed several grays before noon._
8. A type of extraterrestrial with gray skin, a large hairless head, and big black eyes, common in UFO accounts.
   - Simple: A kind of alien with gray skin, a big head, and large black eyes, said to be seen near UFOs.
   - _The man insisted a gray had visited him three nights running._
   - _Reports of grays surged after the film's release._
9. A large baleen whale, Eschrichtius robustus, of the North Pacific.
   - Simple: A large whale that lives in the sea and is gray in color.
   - _A gray surfaced just off the boat's bow, startling the tourists._
   - _The grays calve in the warm lagoons of Baja California._
10. The SI unit of absorbed radiation dose, equal to one joule of energy taken in per kilogram of mass.
   - Simple: A unit used to measure how much radiation something has soaked up.
   - _The dosimeter recorded a little under one gray at the patient's skin._
   - _Doses above several grays can cause acute radiation sickness._

## Verb

6. To become gray, or make something gray, especially as hair loses its color with age; of a population, to grow older on average.
   - Simple: To turn gray or make something gray, especially hair as people age, or, of a group, to get older overall.
   - _Most people start to gray sometime in their forties._
   - _The old shingles had grayed under decades of sun and salt air._

## Other meanings

- (verb) To soften a photographic print by covering the negative with a ground-glass plate during printing.
- (noun) A penny with a tail on both faces, used to cheat at the coin-tossing game two-up.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–9** — It comes from Middle English gray and Old English grǣġ, tracing back through Proto-Germanic *grēwaz and probably to a Proto-Indo-European root. It is cognate with Dutch grauw, German grau, Swedish grå and Icelandic grár, all meaning 'grey'.
**Meaning 10** — The unit honors Louis Harold Gray (1905–1965), a physicist from England.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/gray (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).