Grey/Gray
— Common connotations —
boredom, reality, seriousness, neutrality, dullness, mediocrity, undefinedness, pessimism, tragedy and contentment
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#808080
sRGBB	(r, g, b)	(128, 128, 128)
Source		HTML/CSS[1]
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Grey (outside the U.S. and some parts of the U.S.) or gray (some U.S. only – see spelling differences) describes the tints and shades ranging from black to white. These, including white and black, are known as achromatic colors or neutral colors. In recent years, "neutral colors" had been reclassified. These "new" neutrals have low colorfulness and/or chroma on the color wheel.

Greys are seen commonly in nature and fashion. Grey paints are 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.

The first recorded use of grey as a color name in English was in 700 AD.^[2]

[edit] 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.^{[citation needed]} Yellow, orange and red create a "warm grey". Green, blue, or violet, create a "cool grey".^[3] When there is no cast at all, it is referred to as "neutral grey" or simply "grey".

WARM GREY	COOL GREY
Mixed with 6% yellow.	Mixed with 6% blue.

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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Web colors

There are several tones 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 (this spelling was inherited from the X11 color list), and to this day, Internet Explorer's Trident browser engine does not recognize "grey" and will render it as green. 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 tones of grey, there are actually two grey tones straddling the midpoint in the 8-bit greyscale. 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."

[edit] Color coordinates

RGB

Grey values result when r = g = b, for the color (r, g, b)

CMYK

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 discussion on this topic).

HSL and HSV 

Greys result whenever s is 0 or undefined, as is the case when v is 0 or l is 0 or 1

[edit] In popular culture

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Gerontology

• The color grey is often associated with aging or the passage of time, likely due in part to the decreased pigment-production of hair follicles in time, corresponding to the greying of human hair.^[4] In this context, grey is often used synonymously with "elderly," as in "the grey pound" or "grey power" (when referring to the economic or social influence of the elderly), or as used by groups such as the Gray Panthers.

Journalism

• "The Gray Lady" is the nickname of the New York Times.

Military

• In the American Civil War, Confederate Army uniforms were grey, and the war was sometimes called "The Blue and the Gray".
• The military of Nazi Germany used a green-grey shade called feldgrau.
• Napoleon Bonaparte is often depicted with a grey riding coat.

Nanotechnology

• Grey goo is a hypothetical end of civilization 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).^[5]

Parapsychology

• It has been asserted that those who are suffering from the mental illness of depression have grey auras.^[6]

Philosophy

• A concept that is in a grey area is a concept about which one is unsure what category in which to place it.

Poetry

• Poet George Sterling called San Francisco The Cool, Grey City of Love.^[7]

Politics

• 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.^[8] The phrase originated as a description of François Leclerc du Tremblay, the French monk who served as advisor to Cardinal de Richelieu.
• The National Renaissance Party was an American neo-fascist group led by James Hartung Madole. The party was active from 1949 to 1979. The members of the party were also known as the grey shirts.^[9]

Sexuality

• In the bandana code of the gay leather subculture, wearing a grey bandana means that one is into the Sexual fetish of Bondage (BDSM).^[10]
• 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).^[11]

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.

Sports

• Baseball uniforms used for away games are often grey. This came about because in the 19th and early 20th century, away teams didn't normally have access to laundry facilities on the road, thus stains were not noticeable on the darker grey uniforms as opposed to the white uniforms worn by the home team.
• On the 13th of April 1996 Manchester United wore, for only the 5th time, their (then current) grey away shirts when playing Southampton at Southampton's ground, The Dell. At the half time break, with Manchester United unexpectedly trailing 3-0, they changed into another team kit, this time in blue and white. In the second half Manchester United performed better although only scoring one goal to end the game 3-1 down. It was claimed that ManchesterUnited's poor performance in the first half was down to the players having difficulty seeing their teammates in the grey kit and that kit was never worn again!^[12]

Symbolic language

• In France, to be "grey" (être gris) means to be drunk. Accordingly, to be extremely drunk is to be "black" (être noir). In the U.S., the college slang verb to gray was used around 1900 to mean to get drunk.^[13]

Television

• Grey is associated with former British Prime Minister John Major. His puppet on the TV show Spitting Image was entirely grey implying that he was incredibly dull.

UFOs

• In popular UFO conspiracy theory and in science-fiction, intelligent alien humanoids, are often referred to as greys.

[edit] See also

• Black-and-white
• Davy's grey
• Grisaille
• Payne's grey
• List of colors

[edit] References

[edit] 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):