page_title: Black
section_title: Idioms and expressions
hierarchical_section_title: Black / Culture / Idioms and expressions
caption_attribution_description: A Hebridean ram
context_page_description: Black is the darkest color, the result of the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, a color without hue, like white and gray. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness, while white represents light. Black and white have often been used to describe opposites such as good and evil, the Dark Ages versus Age of Enlightenment, and night versus day. Since the Middle Ages, black has been the symbolic color of solemnity and authority, and for this reason is still commonly worn by judges and magistrates.
  Black was one of the first colors used by artists in neolithic cave paintings. It was used in ancient Egypt and Greece as the color of the underworld. In the Roman Empire, it became the color of mourning, and over the centuries it was frequently associated with death, evil, witches and magic. In the 14th century, it was worn by royalty, clergy, judges and government officials in much of Europe. Black was the color of the industrial revolution, largely fueled by coal, and later by oil. It became the color worn by English romantic poets, businessmen and statesmen in the 19th century, and a high fashion color in the 20th century.
context_section_description: In the United States, "Black Friday" (the day after Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday in November) is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. Many Americans are on holiday because of Thanksgiving, and many retailers open earlier and close later than normal, and offer special prices. The day's name originated in Philadelphia sometime before 1961, and originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive downtown pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on that day. Later an alternative explanation began to be offered: that "Black Friday" indicates the point in the year that retailers begin to turn a profit, or are "in the black", because of the large volume of sales on that day.
  "In the black" means profitable. Accountants originally used black ink in ledgers to indicate profit, and red ink to indicate a loss.
  Black Friday also refers to any particularly disastrous day on financial markets. The first Black Friday (1869), September 24, 1869, was caused by the efforts of two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk, to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange.
  A blacklist is a list of undesirable persons or entities (to be placed on the list is to be "blacklisted").
  Black comedy is a form of comedy dealing with morbid and serious topics. The expression is similar to black humor or black humour.
  A black mark against a person relates to something bad they have done.
  A black mood is a bad one (cf Winston Churchill's clinical depression, which he called "my black dog").
  Black market is used to denote the trade of illegal goods, or alternatively the illegal trade of otherwise legal items at considerably higher prices, e.g. to evade rationing.
  Black propaganda is the use of known falsehoods, partial truths, or masquerades in propaganda to confuse an opponent.
  Blackmail is the act of threatening someone to do something that would hurt them in some way, such as by revealing sensitive information about them, in order to force the threatened party to fulfill certain demands. Ordinarily, such a threat is illegal.
  If the black eight-ball, in billiards, is sunk before all others are out of play, the player loses.
  The black sheep of the family is the ne'er-do-well.
  To blackball someone is to block their entry into a club or some such institution. In the traditional English gentlemen's club, members vote on the admission of a candidate by secretly placing a white or black ball in a hat. If upon the completion of voting, there was even one black ball amongst the white, the candidate would be denied membership, and he would never know who had "blackballed" him.
  Black tea in the Western culture is known as "crimson tea" in Chinese and culturally influenced languages (紅 茶, Mandarin Chinese hóngchá; Japanese kōcha; Korean hongcha).
  "The black" is a wildfire suppression term referring to a burned area on a wildfire capable of acting as a safety zone.
  Black coffee refers to coffee without sugar or cream.
caption: Namesake of the idiom "black sheep"
exif: {}