gray area

Idioms  

1. Indeterminate territory, undefined position, neither here nor there. For example, There's a large gray area between what is legal and what is not. This term, which uses gray in the sense of “neither black nor white” (or halfway between the two), dates only from the mid-1900s.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

gray area

Some 51% of U.S. adults place themselves alongside Wallace in this financial gray area, according to a new survey by Edward Jones and Gallup, their first on the topic.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 2, 2026

“The gauge is gone. The gray area is gone.”

From Los Angeles Times ● May 18, 2026

I’ve been hosting on Airbnb for a few years, and I’ve recently found myself in a bit of a gray area, morally speaking.

From MarketWatch ● Apr. 3, 2026

That was a huge burden on our editors, especially since it was still a gray area.

From Slate ● Apr. 1, 2026

There was one small gray area of the sky still aglow in the west; the rest was blackness, and flashes of lightning.

From "The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War" by Michael Shaara