black
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: blăk
ipa: /blæk/
rhymes: -æk
Forms: form: blacks
form: blacke
form: Black
form: blk
form: blak
Etymology: From Middle English blak, black, blake, from Old English blæc (“black, dark", also "ink”), from Proto-West Germanic *blak, from Proto-Germanic *blakaz (“burnt”) (compare Dutch blaken (“to burn”), Low German blak, black (“blackness, black paint, (black) ink”), Old High German blah (“black”)), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleg- (“to burn, shine”) (compare Latin flagrāre (“to burn”), Ancient Greek φλόξ (phlóx, “flame”), Sanskrit भर्ग (bharga, “radiance”)).
Sense 20 is a semantic loan from Cantonese 黑面 (hak1 min6, “to pull a long face, to scowl”).
Senses: examples: text: Black is the badge of hell, / The hue of dungeons, and the suit of night.
ref: c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]:
synonyms: blackness
antonyms: whiteness
glosses: The colour/color perceived in the absence of light, but also when no light is reflected, but rather absorbed.
antonyms: white
glosses: A black dye or pigment.
glosses: A pen, pencil, crayon, etc., made of black pigment.
examples: text: Groans, and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible.
ref: 1625, Francis Bacon, “Of Death”, in Essays:
glosses: Black cloth hung up at funerals.
examples: text: "How! They surely cannot pretend that the black is an Englishman?" "There are all kinds of Englishmen, black and white, when seamen grow scarce. […]"
ref: 1863, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter XXIV, in Miles Wallingford:
text: But presently the negro seized the Hindoo by the throat; the Hindoo just pricked him in the arm with his knife, and the next moment his own head was driven against the side of the cabin with a stunning crack[…]The cabin was now full, and Sharpe was for putting both the blacks in irons.
ref: 1863, Charles Reade, Hard Cash:
text: Numa was about to charge—there was little time in which to compare various methods or weigh the probable results of any. And then a number of things happened, almost simultaneously—the lion sprang from his ambush toward the retreating black—Tarzan cried out in warning—and the black turned just in time to see Numa halted in mid-flight by a slender strand of grass rope, the noosed end of which had fallen cleanly about his neck.
ref: 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 123:
text: Prize-winning books continue a trend toward increased representation of blacks, accounting for most of the books with exclusively black characters.
ref: 2004, Anthony Joseph Paul Cortese, Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising, page 108:
glosses: A member or descendant of any of various (African, Aboriginal, etc) ethnic groups which typically have dark pigmentation of the skin.
examples: text: black don't crack
glosses: Blackness, the condition of belonging to or being descended from one of these ethnic groups.
topics: ball-games
billiards
games
hobbies
lifestyle
pool
snooker
sports
glosses: The black ball.
topics: ball-games
baseball
games
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: The edge of home plate.
glosses: A type of firecracker that is really more dark brown in colour.
examples: text: Pernod and black; snakebite and black; cider and black
glosses: Ellipsis of blackcurrant.
glosses: Ellipsis of blackcurrant.
Blackcurrant as syrup or crème de cassis used for cocktails.
examples: text: At this point black makes a disastrous move.
text: 1...Qd3 2 Ne1 Nd2! wins since 3 Nxd3 Rxf1 mate while 3 Qxc7+ Kg6 only delays the end. The best White can do is 3 Qc3+ Qxc3 4 Rxc3 Rxe1 when Black also wins the Bf1 and will be two pieces up.
ref: 2023 January 13, Leonard Barden, “Chess: Carlsen takes on young guns at Wijk as world champion eyes record”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 23 Jan 2023:
topics: board-games
chess
games
glosses: The person playing with the black set of pieces.
examples: text: the black or sight of the eye
ref: 1644, Kenelm Digby, Two Treatises:
glosses: Something, or a part of a thing, which is black.
examples: text: defiling her white lawn of chastity with ugly blacks of lust
ref: 1619, William Rowley, All's Lost by Lust:
glosses: A stain; a spot.
glosses: A dark smut fungus, harmful to wheat.
examples: text: He pulled on the black, the tip of the filter hot and malleable between his lips, and felt a cool tingling coat the simmer in his chest and begin to eat away at it in small bites.
ref: 2008, Jesmyn Ward, Where the Line Bleeds, Bloomsbury (2018), page 48:
glosses: Marijuana.
Derived terms: acetylene black
African black
animal black
Berlin black
Black Act
black and tan
black and white
black don't crack
blackless
Blackophobia
blue-black
boneblack
Brunswick black
carbon black
channel black
coal black
cut to black
eye black
fade to black
Frankfort black
impingement black
ivory black
jet black
jet-black
lampblack
long black
man in black
Man in Black
Men in Black
mineral black
mulga black
palladium black
Pernod and black
platinum black
raisin black
short black
slate black
smoke black
smoky black
Spanish black
the new black
toothblack
two seconds to black