Black definition
Complete or almost complete absence of light; darkness.
noun
Without cream, milk, etc.
adjective
Wearing clothing of the darkest visual hue.
The black knight.
adjective
Evil; wicked.
The pirates' black deeds.
adjective
Black clothes, esp. when worn in mourning.
noun
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Without hope.
A black future.
adjective
Soiled, as from soot; dirty.
Feet black from playing outdoors.
adjective
Clothing of the darkest hue, especially such clothing worn for mourning.
noun
Inveterate; confirmed; deep-dyed.
A black villain.
adjective
Opposite to white; of the color of coal or pitch.
adjective
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Any substance or thing that is black.
noun
To polish with blacking.
verb
Sullen or angry.
Black looks.
adjective
A spot or area that is black.
noun
A member of a black people.
noun
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Complete darkness or absence of light.
noun
To make black; blacken.
verb
(person) 1886-1971; associate justice, U.S. Supreme Court (1937-71)
proper name
(person) 1728-99; Scot. chemist.
proper name
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Wearing black clothing.
adjective
To become black.
verb
Disgraceful.
adjective
Full of sorrow or suffering; sad; dismal; gloomy.
adjective
Disastrous.
adjective
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The definition of black is covered in darkness or having no light.
An example of black is the color of the sky at night.
adjective
Black is defined as the color that has no light.
An example of black is darkness.
noun
(chiefly british) Boycotted as part of a labor union action.
adjective
Of or belonging to a racial group having brown to black skin, especially one of African origin.
The black population of South Africa.
adjective
Of or belonging to an American ethnic group descended from African peoples having dark skin; African-American.
adjective
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Something that is colored black.
noun
The condition of making or operating at a profit.
Worked hard to get the business back into the black.
noun
The achromatic color value of minimum lightness or maximum darkness; the color of objects that absorb nearly all light of all visible wavelengths; one extreme of the neutral gray series, the opposite being white. Although strictly a response to zero stimulation of the retina, the perception of black appears to depend on contrast with surrounding color stimuli.
noun
A pigment or dye having this color value.
noun
A member of a racial group having brown to black skin, especially one of African origin.
noun
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An American descended from peoples of African origin having brown to black skin; an African American.
noun
The black-colored pieces, as in chess or checkers.
noun
The player using these pieces.
noun
Humorous or satirical in a morbid or cynical way.
Black comedy.
adjective
Secret; covert; hidden.
A CIA black operator.
adjective
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Designating or of any of the dark-skinned traditional inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, or Melanesia or their descendants in other parts of the world.
adjective
By, for, or about black people as a group; specif., in the U.S., by, for, or about black Americans.
Black studies.
adjective
Totally without light; in complete darkness.
adjective
Very dark.
adjective
(chess) The player or side with the black or darker-colored pieces.
noun
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Black color.
noun
A black pigment, paint, or dye.
noun
(sometimes capitalized) Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin.
adjective
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(chiefly historical) Designated for use by those ethnic groups which have dark pigmentation of the skin.
Black drinking fountain; black hospital.
adjective
Expressing menace, or discontent; threatening; sullen.
He shot her a black look.
adjective
Illegitimate, illegal or disgraced.
adjective
(Ireland, informal) Overcrowded.
adjective
(board games, chess) Of or relating to the playing pieces of a board game deemed to belong to the "black" set (in chess the set used by the player who moves second) (often regardless of the pieces' actual colour).
The black pieces in this chess set are made of dark blue glass.
adjective
(Germany, politics) Related to the Christian Democratic Union.
After the election, the parties united in a black-yellow alliance.
adjective
(secrecy) Relating to a initiative whose existence or exact nature must remain withheld from the general public.
5 percent of the Defense Department funding will go to black projects.
adjective
The colour/color perceived in the absence of light.
noun
A pen, pencil, crayon, etc., made of black pigment.
noun
(billiards, snooker, pool, with the) The black ball.
noun
(baseball) The edge of home plate.
noun
In chess and similar games, the person playing with the black set of pieces.
At this point black makes a disastrous move.
noun
Part of a thing which is distinguished from the rest by being black.
noun
To apply blacking to something.
verb
Soiled; dirty.
adjective
Evil; wicked; harmful.
adjective
Being of the color black, producing or reflecting comparatively little light and having no predominant hue.
adjective
Having little or no light.
A black, moonless night.
adjective
Very dark in color.
Rich black soil; black, wavy hair.
adjective
Deserving of, indicating, or incurring censure or dishonor.
adjective
Served without milk or cream.
Black coffee.
adjective
Appearing to emanate from a source other than the actual point of origin. Used chiefly of intelligence operations.
Black propaganda; black radio transmissions.
adjective
Disclosed, for reasons of security, only to an extremely limited number of authorized persons; very highly classified.
Black programs in the Defense Department; the Pentagon's black budget.
adjective
To make black.
Blacked their faces with charcoal.
verb
To apply blacking to.
Blacked the stove.
verb
(chiefly british) To boycott as part of a labor union action.
verb
Being a trail, as for skiing, marked with a sign having a black diamond, indicating a high level of difficulty.
adjective
Cheerless and depressing; gloomy.
Black thoughts.
adjective
Being or characterized by morbid or grimly satiric humor.
A black comedy.
adjective
Marked by anger or sullenness.
Gave me a black look.
adjective
Attended with disaster; calamitous.
A black day; the stock market crash on Black Friday.
adjective
black out
- to cover (writing, printing, etc.) with black pencil marks or paint
- to cause a blackout in
- to lose consciousness; faint
- to lose all memory of an event or fact
idiom
in the black
- operating at a profit
idiom
into the black
- into a profitable condition financially
idiom
Other Word Forms
Noun
Singular:
black
Plural:
blacksAdjective
Base Form:
black
Comparative:
blacker
Superlative:
blackestIdioms and Phrasal Verbs
Origin of black
- Middle English blak from Old English blæc bhel-1 in Indo-European roots
From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
- From Middle English black, blak, blake, from Old English blæc (“black, dark", also "ink”), from Proto-Germanic *blakaz (“burnt”) (compare Dutch blaken (“to burn”), Old High German blah (“black”), Old Norse blakra (“to blink”)), from Proto-Indo-European *bhleg- (“to burn, shine”) (compare Latin flagrāre (“to burn”), Ancient Greek φλόξ (phlox, “flame”), Albanian blozë (“soot”), Sanskrit bharga 'radiance' [script?]). More at bleach.
From Wiktionary