Gray

How to spell gray

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce gray

What does gray mean?

1. adjectiveOf a neutral colour between black and white, like ash or an overcast sky.
2. nounThe neutral colour midway between black and white.
3. verbTo become or make gray, especially of hair losing its colour.

Gray in a sentence

• adjective

  He wore a gray wool suit to the interview.

• noun

  The designer painted the office a soft warm gray.

• verb

  Long shifts and stress can gray your hair early.

• adjective

  The morning sky was flat and gray before the rain.

• noun

  A streak of gray ran through the marble countertop.

• verb

  Years of sun and salt air will gray the wooden deck.

Where does gray come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English grǣg, an adjective describing the colour between black and white, the shade of ash, lead, or an overcast sky. It belongs to a broad Germanic family, with close relatives in Old Norse grár, Old High German grao, and modern German grau and Dutch grauw, all carrying the same dull, neutral colour sense. For centuries English happily used two spellings, 'gray' and 'grey', side by side, and writers chose almost at random. The split that we know today hardened only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when American usage settled firmly on 'gray' while British and Canadian writers kept 'grey'. The very same word also lent its name to the SI unit of absorbed radiation dose, the gray, honouring the British physicist Louis Harold Gray, whose surname carries this old colour spelling. Because the two spellings are genuine dialect twins rather than different words, the trap is purely about which letter, a or e, your own region expects.

How the word is built

• gray (whole word, from Old English grǣg, a colour adjective; no separable prefix or suffix)

British and American spelling

Gray is the American spelling. British English spells it grey.