paint black

Idioms  

1. Represent someone or something as evil or harmful. This idiom is most often used in a negative context, as in He's not so black as he's been painted. [Late 1500s]

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Example Sentences

As reported in Smithsonian Magazine in 2020, all it takes is to paint black one-half of one blade.

From Seattle Times • May 14, 2024

Gleaming under a fresh coat of white paint, black trim and mist-green highlights, it tugs on lines that creak from the marina’s gentle surge.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 3, 2023

I couldn’t paint black women jumping out of fields with guns.

From New York Times • Mar. 1, 2020

Staff co-operated by helping the photographer create sets, allocating him rooms which he could paint black or white and leaving food inside.

From BBC • Jan. 1, 2017

The next day, the background still looks off to me, so I take a medium-thick brush and paint black stick figures pulsing in the air around Liberty, thorny scars that look like barbed wire.

From "Dreaming in Cuban" by Cristina García