achromatic adj

1 being of the achromatic color of maximum lightness; having little or no hue owing to reflection of almost all incident light; "as white as fresh snow"; "a bride's white dress" [syn: white] [ant: black]

2 being of the achromatic color of maximum darkness; having little or no hue owing to absorption of almost all incident light; "black leather jackets"; "as black as coal"; "rich black soil" [syn: black] [ant: white]

3 having no hue [ant: chromatic]

English

Etymology

Greek colorless; privative + color: compare French achromatique

Adjective

1. Free from color; transmitting light without color-related distortion.
2. Containing components such as achromatic lenses and prisms, designed to prevent color-related distortion.
3. Uncolored; not absorbing color from a fluid; -- said of tissue
4. Having only the diatonic notes of the scale; not modified by accidentals.
5. Being achromatic in subject: "The lecture was achromatic, the speaker used politics to suppress the weight of his/her subject."

Related terms

• achromaticity
• achromatism
• achromatic lens
• achromatic prism
• chromatic

Translations

• Chinese: 消色差的(1,2); 非染色性的(3)
• Italian: acromatico (all)

This article is about the color. For other uses, see Grey (disambiguation) and Gray (disambiguation).

Grey or gray (see spelling differences) describes any shade between black and white. Collectively, white, black, and the range of greys between them are known as achromatic colors or neutral colors. Greys are seen commonly in nature and fashion. Grey paints can be created by mixing complementary colors (that is colors directly opposite on the color wheel, e.g. yellow and violet). In the RGB color model used by computer displays, it is created by mixing equal amounts of red, green, and blue light. Images which consist wholly of neutral colors are called monochrome, black-and-white or greyscale.

In color theory

Most grey pigments have a cool or warm cast to them, as the human eye can detect even a minute amount of saturation. Yellow, orange and red create a "warm grey". Green, blue, or purple, create a "cool grey". When there is no cast at all, it is referred to as "neutral grey" or simply "grey". Two colors are called complementary colors if grey is produced when they are combined. Grey is its own complement. Consequently, grey remains grey when its color spectrum is inverted, and so has no opposite, or alternately is its own opposite.

Artists sometimes use the two different spellings to distinguish between strict combinations of black and white versus combinations that have elements of hue.

Web colors

There are several shades of grey available for use with HTML and CSS in word form, while there are 254 true greys available through Hex triplet. All are spelled with an a: using the e spelling can cause unexpected errors with outdated browsers (this discrepancy was inherited from the X11 color list), and to this day, Internet Explorer's Trident browser engine does not recognize "grey" and will not render it. Another anomaly is that "gray" is in fact much darker than the X11 color marked "darkgray;" this is because of a conflict with the original HTML gray and the X11's "gray," which is closer to HTML's "silver." The three "slategray" colors are not themselves on the greyscale, but are slightly saturated towards cyan (green + blue). Note that since there are an even (256, including black and white) number of unsaturated shades of grey, there are actually two grey tones straddling the midpoint in the 8-bit grayscale. The color name "gray" has been assigned the lighter of the two shades (128 also known as #808080), due to rounding up. In browsers that support it, "grey" has the same color as "gray."

Light (RYB)

     

red (●) + yellow (●) + blue (●) = white (●)

 

Pigment (GVO)

     

green (●) + violet (●) + orange (●) = black (●)

 

Color coordinates

Grey values result when r = g = b, for the color (r, g, b): Grey values are produced by c = m = y = 0, for the color (c, m, y, k). Lightness is adjusted by varying k. In theory, any mixture where c = m = y is neutral, but in practice such mixtures are often a muddy brown (see CMYK#Why black ink is used).:Greys result whenever s is 0 or undefined, as is the case when v is 0 or l is 0 or 1

In human culture

Environmentalism

• Greys has been used pejoratively by environmentalists to describe technophiles as being those who like granite, concrete and other city materials, as opposed to the term "greens" to describe those in favor of environmentalism.

Ethics

• In a moral sense grey is either used
  • pejoratively to describe situations that have no clear moral value, or
  • positively to balance an all-black or all-white view (for example, shades of grey represent magnitudes of good and bad).

Folklore

• In folklore, grey is often associated with goblin folk of several kinds. Scandinavian folklore often depicts their gnomes and nisser in grey clothing. This is partly because of their association with dusk, partly because these races, including elves (see below), often are outside moral standards (black or white).

Literature / Film / Music

• In J. R. R. Tolkien's works:
  • Gandalf is called the Grey Pilgrim.
  • The Grey Havens
  • The Grey Elves
  • Ered Mithrin, the Grey Mountains. Tolkien chose grey from folklore tradition mentioned above.
  • The Noldor and the Dúnedain typically have grey eyes.
• Rand al'Thor of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time is described as having grey eyes.
• In the series The T*Witches, those of magical power are described as having grey eyes.
• In Michael Ende's Momo, the men in grey are malicious spirits who prey on people's time and trick them into "saving" it.
• In Don DeLillo's 1985 novel White Noise, the inventor of Dylar is at first only referred to as Mr. Gray.
• Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are two seminal sword-and-sorcery fantasy heroes created by Fritz Leiber.
• The Brenin Llwyd, the eponymous antagonist of The Grey King, by Susan Cooper.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
• Gray Lady Down, an action film about a stranded submarine.
• A purposely nonsensical line in Paul Simon's song "I Do It For Your Love": "We were married / On a rainy day / The sky was yellow / And the grass was gray."
• A song from The Kinks Muswell Hillbillies album is titled Here Come the People in Grey.

Television

• The Grey Council consists of the nine leaders of the Minbari in the Babylon 5 universe.
• Grey's Anatomy is a popular drama tv series. The name suggests that the show might be more factual than it is in reality.

Journalism

• The "Grey Lady" is the nickname of the New York Times

Sociology

• Grey symbolizes mediocrity, the background noise of society.

Sound Engineering

• Grey noise is random noise subjected to a psychoacoustic equal loudness curve (such as an inverted A-weighting curve) over a given range of frequencies, giving the listener the perception that it is equally loud at all frequencies.

Religion

• In the Christian religion, grey is the color of ashes, and so a biblical symbol of mourning and repentance, described as sackcloth and ashes. It can be used during Lent or on special days of fasting and prayer.

Gerontology

• Aging hair is often perceived as being grey although it is actually white, because white hairs next to other colors look comparatively darker. Hence grey is associated with the elderly, and has inspired the name of the Gray Panthers and expressions such as Grey pound.
• Hence the inspiration for the song The Old Gray Mare, and punning reference such as the Bugs Bunny cartoon with the double-play-on-words title The Old Grey Hare.

Military

• In the American Civil War, Confederate Army uniforms were grey, and the war was sometimes called "The Blue and the Grey".
• Naval camouflage using shades of grey were used during the World Wars because of advances in Naval Warfare.
• Feldgrau (field grey) was a common color of Wehrmacht uniforms.
• Urban camouflage is composed of patches of shades of grey, while woodland camouflage uses ranges of brown and green.

Nazi Germany

• Martin Bormann was called the grey eminence because as the executive secretary to Adolf Hitler, he amassed great power behind the scene because he was the one who controlled access to the Führer. The phrase originated as a description of François Leclerc du Tremblay, the French monk who served as advisor to Cardinal de Richelieu.

Neurology

• The substance that composes the brain is referred to as "grey matter", and so the color is associated with things intellectual.
• Grey is associated with former British Prime Minister John Major. His puppet on Spitting Image was entirely grey implying that he was incredibly dull.

Parapsychology

• It has been asserted that those who are suffering from the mental illness of depression have grey auras.

Parties

• A "grey person" is someone who goes unnoticed, a wallflower.

Psychology

• Grey is often synonymous with things that are dull and boring
• Grey represents pessimism whereas its opposite, optimism, is represented by the color rose.
• A concept that is in a Grey area is a concept about which one is unsure what category in which to place it.

Sexuality

• In the bandana code of the gay leather subculture, wearing a grey bandana means that one is into the fetish of bondage.
• In gay slang, a grey queen is a gay person who works for the financial services industry (this term originates from the fact that in the 1950s, people who worked in this profession often wore grey flannel suits).

Sports

• There was once an American football bowl game featuring a northern squad vs. a southern squad, and known as the Blue-Gray Game.
• Grey Cup, emblematic of the championship of the Canadian Football League, named for its donor, Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey.
• In baseball, grey is the color typically used for road uniforms.

Nanotechnology

• Grey goo is to a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all living matter on Earth while building more of themselves (a scenario known as ecophagy).

UFOs

• In popular UFO conspiracy theories and in science-fiction, small grey aliens, with large, tear-shaped black eyes are referred to as "little greys".

References

See also

• List of colors
• Payne's grey
• Davy's grey
• Grisaille
• Black and White Photography

External links

• Three computational biologists’ theory to explain how humans perceive achromatic colors:
• Chart showing a comparison of the achromatic (grey scale) values of the colors on the RYB and RGB color wheels, respectively (the chart is halfway down the webpage):