gray
adjective
of a color between white and black; having a neutral hue.
gray
1 American
[gray]
/ greɪ /
especially British,
grey
adjective
-
grayer,
comparative
-
grayest
superlative
-
of a color between white and black; having a neutral hue.
-
dark, dismal, or gloomy.
gray skies.
-
dull, dreary, or monotonous.
-
having gray hair; gray-headed.
-
pertaining to old age; mature.
-
Informal. pertaining to, involving, or composed of older persons.
gray households.
-
old or ancient.
-
indeterminate and intermediate in character.
The tax audit concentrated on deductions in the gray area between purely personal and purely business expenses.
noun
-
any achromatic color; any color with zero chroma, intermediate between white and black.
-
something of this color.
-
gray material or clothing.
to dress in gray.
-
an unbleached and undyed condition.
-
(often initial capital letter) a member of the Confederate army in the American Civil War or the army itself.
-
a horse of a gray color.
-
a horse that appears white but is not an albino.
verb (used with or without object)
-
grays,
present (3rd person singular)
-
grayed,
past participle, past
-
graying
present participle
gray
2
American
[gray]
/ greɪ /
noun
Physics.
Gray
3
American
[gray]
/ greɪ /
noun
-
Asa 1810–88, U.S. botanist.
-
Robert, 1755–1806, U.S. explorer and sea captain: discovered the Columbia River.
-
Thomas, 1716–71, English poet.
gray
1
British
/ ɡreɪ /
adjective
gray
2
British
/ ɡreɪ /
noun
Gray
3
British
/ ɡreɪ /
noun
gray
Scientific
/ grā /
gray
Idioms
Usage
What’s the difference between gray and grey? Gray and grey are simply different spellings of the same word, which refers to the color halfway between black and white (among other more figurative meanings). In popular use, the two spellings are used interchangeably, though one spelling is often preferred in many places. The spelling gray is much more common in American English, while grey is more common in British English. Remember: spell gray with an a in America, and spell grey with an e in England (among other places). Want to learn more? Read the full breakdown of the difference between gray and grey.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
graysimple
-
grayssimple
-
have grayedperfect
-
has grayedperfect
-
am grayingprogressive
-
are grayingprogressive
-
is grayingprogressive
-
have been grayingperfect progressive
-
has been grayingperfect progressive
Past
-
grayedsimple
-
had grayedperfect
-
was grayingprogressive
-
were grayingprogressive
-
had been grayingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of gray1
First recorded before 900; Middle English grei, grai, Old English grǣg, grēg; cognate with German grau, Old Norse grār
Origin of gray2
First recorded in 1975; named in honor of Louis Harold Gray (1905–65), English radiobiologist
Explanation
Because the color gray is between black and white — actually a mix of the two — it is often used to denote something dull or monotonous. When the sun comes out after a long stretch of gray days, you suddenly feel alive again. Everybody to the beach! You might feel old when you see your gray hairs, but I think they make you look wise and distinguished. Because gray is dull and indistinct, you can refer to something not quite clear as being "in a gray area." You often find some gray area between right and wrong . . . especially when you are accused of doing something wrong. Don’t worry about the British spelling "grey": it’s interchangeable with the American English spelling.
Vocabulary lists containing gray
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Mark Zuckerberg was superglued into those Brunello Cucinelli gray T-shirts until he started wearing oversize Amiri tees in an effort to seem cooler.
From Slate ● Oct. 3, 2026
The huge gray shark that won’t leave a South Korea port city.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 1, 2026
Dressed in a gray T-shirt, dark collared shirt and leather pants, RM’s hair is a light burnt sienna color matching the fur of the stylized tiger on the screen behind him.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2026
Yet he confronts the nuanced situation in Europe in facile terms, seemingly unable to perceive shades of gray.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026
Karli was gray in the face, and quite lifeless.
From "An Elephant in the Garden" by Michael Morpurgo
Gray himself was initially not breathing but an ambulance crew, who were passing the crash scene by chance, opened his airway, saving his life.
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
The trial heard that analysis of an insurance company "black box" showed that Gray had been a "perfect driver" in the weeks before the collision.
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
Weekly jobless claims also were steady, while jobs cuts in September were their lowest since 2022, according to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 1, 2026
Senior executives at Blackstone have long faced the reality that Jonathan Gray, the firm’s 56-year-old president, is expected to succeed CEO Stephen Schwarzman.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
One day that summer, a stranger with a Chaplinesque mustache showed up in Gray Horse to offer his assistance to the private eyes.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
Just tell Claude: Make the gray background a little grayer.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 23, 2026
The world is getting grayer each day thanks to an epic demographic wave.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 31, 2025
Marcus Mariota’s hair is grayer now than when he entered the NFL as a highly touted prospect and a potential face of a franchise.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 14, 2024
That book examined the phenomenon of exiles — “not the gory amputation of refugee flight,” Mr. Eder wrote, “but arrival’s grayer course of tissue rejection.”
From New York Times ● Mar. 28, 2023
Joanna Landry could feel her hair getting grayer by the minute.
From "The Landry News" by Andrew Clements
Presumably the same is true of the grayest day.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 21, 2023
More than 1 in 5 people are over 65, a rate on par with some of the world’s grayest nations.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 11, 2023
It makes a great coffee table book, one that can help inspire on even the grayest of days.
From The Verge ● Apr. 28, 2022
Itami is one of several localities that have turned to electronic tracking as Japan, the world’s grayest nation, confronts an epidemic of dementia.
From New York Times ● Feb. 2, 2022
What is this sudden gayety that shakes the grayest boughs?
From The Last Harvest by John Burroughs
The biggest problem involved the neutral axis, the line of grays that runs from black to white.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 7, 2026
As we follow the cat on her solitary journey through a wind-tossed landscape of muted grays and blues, the question of what a small cat needs takes on a more philosophical bent.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 23, 2026
The broker had staged the house with attractive furniture in taupes and grays.
From Slate ● Mar. 6, 2025
Bulbs are defiant harbingers of spring in colder climes, sometimes pushing up through the snow in their zeal to greet the sun and spread a little color on a bleak landscape of slushy grays.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 2, 2025
There was yellow gold, burned gold, and gold turning to brown; there were reds blending with browns, greens with grays, and solid browns shining like silk.
From "Across Five Aprils" by Irene Hunt
In the distance, somewhat grayed by atmospheric haze, are the smokestacks and cooling tower of the power plant.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
Despite aggressive debridement — daily surgical scrapings of her wounds to clean out the infection — and expensive medications, the tissues in her leg grayed at the edges.
From New York Times ● Nov. 26, 2024
In one arresting work, attic wainscoting is a series of vertical black rectangles lined up one after the next against grayed ground.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2023
The fire department noted that the large amounts of logs and brush inside the landfill helped produce the prodigious plumes of smoke that further grayed out the sky well into Tuesday.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 6, 2023
The way his grayed coat draped his frame announced that he was old.
From "Pax" by Sara Pennypacker
Clad in prosthetics with a head full of graying hair, Cruise is far from his usual stunts-heavy, bravado-filled roles, which could make his typical audience less likely to come out to theaters, analysts said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 2, 2026
The first signs that a dog is crossing over into his senior years are often a graying muzzle, cloudier eyes or a slower gait.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 2026
The alarm was immediate, with lawmakers and pundits invoking the specter of a graying, shrinking America unable to fund its elders.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 6, 2026
Kansas City Federal Reserve President Jeff Schmid has found a silver lining in America’s graying demographics: All of those extra visits to the doctor are good for the economy.
From Barron's ● Apr. 3, 2026
It was filled with what looked like graying meat.
From "Witchlings" by Claribel A. Ortega
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
