Definitions of black [æk]

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Definition of 'black'

Random House Webster's College Dictionary

1. (adj.) black
lacking hue and brightness; absorbing light without reflecting any of the rays composing it.

2.  black
characterized by absence of light; enveloped in darkness:
a black night.

3.  black
(sometimes cap.)

4.  black
pertaining or belonging to any of the various populations having dark skin pigmentation, specifically the dark-skinned peoples of Africa, Oceania, and Australia.

5.  black
soiled or stained with dirt.

6.  black
gloomy; pessimistic; dismal:
a black future.

7.  black
sullen or hostile:
black words.

8.  black
(of coffee or tea) served without milk or cream.

9.  black
harmful, evil, or wicked:
a black heart.

10.  black
indicating censure, disgrace, etc.:
a black mark on one's record.

11.  black
marked by disaster or misfortune:
black areas of drought.

12.  black
wearing black or dark clothing or armor:
the black prince.

13.  black
morbidly or grimly satirical:
black comedy.

14.  black
secret; covert:
a black program to rebuild air defenses.

15. (n.) black
the color at one end of the gray scale, opposite to white, absorbing all wavelengths of light.

16.  black
(sometimes cap.)

17.  black
a member of any of various dark-skinned peoples, esp. those of Africa, Oceania, and Australia.

18.  black
black clothing, esp. as a sign of mourning.

19.  black
the dark-colored pieces or squares in checkers or chess.

20.  black
black pigment:
lamp black.

21.  black
a type or breed that is black in color.

22. (v.t.) black
to make black; put black on; blacken.

23.  black
to polish (shoes, boots, etc.) with blacking.

24. (v.i.) black
to become black; take on a black color; blacken.

25.  black
black out,

26.  black
to lose consciousness or memory temporarily.

27.  black
to obliterate or suppress.

28.  black
to extinguish (all the stage lights).

29.  black
to make or become inoperable.

30.  black
to obscure by concealing all light in defense against air raids.

31.  black
to impose a broadcast blackout on (an area).

32.  black
in black and white,

33.  black
in print or writing:
I want that agreement in black and white.

34.  black
in the black, operating at a profit.

Etymology: (bef. 900; ME; OE blæc, c. OHG blah-; akin to ON blakkr black, blek ink)

Definition of 'black'

Princeton's WordNet

1. (noun) black, blackness, inkiness
the quality or state of the achromatic color of least lightness (bearing the least resemblance to white)

2. (noun) total darkness, lightlessness, blackness, pitch blackness, black
total absence of light
"they fumbled around in total darkness"; "in the black of night"

3. (noun) Black, Joseph Black
British chemist who identified carbon dioxide and who formulated the concepts of specific heat and latent heat (1728-1799)

4. (noun) Black, Shirley Temple Black, Shirley Temple
popular child actress of the 1930's (born in 1928)

5. (noun) Black, Black person, blackamoor, Negro, Negroid
a person with dark skin who comes from Africa (or whose ancestors came from Africa)

6. (noun) black
(board games) the darker pieces

7. (adj) black
black clothing (worn as a sign of mourning)
"the widow wore black"

8. (adj) black
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"

9. (adj) black
of or belonging to a racial group having dark skin especially of sub-Saharan African origin
"a great people--a black people--...injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization"- Martin Luther King Jr.

10. (adj) black
marked by anger or resentment or hostility
"black looks"; "black words"

11. (adj) black, bleak, dim
offering little or no hope
"the future looked black"; "prospects were bleak"; "Life in the Aran Islands has always been bleak and difficult"- J.M.Synge; "took a dim view of things"

12. (adj) black, dark, sinister
stemming from evil characteristics or forces; wicked or dishonorable
"black deeds"; "a black lie"; "his black heart has concocted yet another black deed"; "Darth Vader of the dark side"; "a dark purpose"; "dark undercurrents of ethnic hostility"; "the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him"-Thomas Hardy

13. (adj) black, calamitous, disastrous, fatal, fateful
(of events) having extremely unfortunate or dire consequences; bringing ruin
"the stock market crashed on Black Friday"; "a calamitous defeat"; "the battle was a disastrous end to a disastrous campaign"; "such doctrines, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory"- Charles Darwin; "it is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it"- Douglas MacArthur; "a fateful error"

14. (adj) black, blackened
(of the face) made black especially as with suffused blood
"a face black with fury"

15. (adj) black, pitch-black, pitch-dark
extremely dark
"a black moonless night"; "through the pitch-black woods"; "it was pitch-dark in the cellar"

16. (adj) black, grim, mordant
harshly ironic or sinister
"black humor"; "a grim joke"; "grim laughter"; "fun ranging from slapstick clowning ... to savage mordant wit"

17. (adj) black
(of intelligence operations) deliberately misleading
"black propaganda"

18. (adj) bootleg, black, black-market, contraband, smuggled
distributed or sold illicitly
"the black economy pays no taxes"

19. (adj) black, disgraceful, ignominious, inglorious, opprobrious, shameful
(used of conduct or character) deserving or bringing disgrace or shame
"Man...has written one of his blackest records as a destroyer on the oceanic islands"- Rachel Carson; "an ignominious retreat"; "inglorious defeat"; "an opprobrious monument to human greed"; "a shameful display of cowardice"

20. (adj) black
(of coffee) without cream or sugar

21. (verb) black, smutty
soiled with dirt or soot
"with feet black from playing outdoors"; "his shirt was black within an hour"

22. (verb) blacken, melanize, melanise, nigrify, black
make or become black
"The smoke blackened the ceiling"; "The ceiling blackened"

Definition of 'black'

Kernerman English Learner’s Dictionary

1. (adjective) black
having the darkest color
the black night sky; a black dress

2.  black
from a race whose ancestors are from Africa
the first black governor

3.  black
unpleasant and sad
a black day in our history

4.  black
joking about things not usually considered funny
black humor

5. (noun) black
the darkest color
The car comes in grey and black.

Definition of 'black'

Webster Dictionary

1. (adj) black
destitute of light, or incapable of reflecting it; of the color of soot or coal; of the darkest or a very dark color, the opposite of white; characterized by such a color; as, black cloth; black hair or eyes

2. (adj) black
in a less literal sense: Enveloped or shrouded in darkness; very dark or gloomy; as, a black night; the heavens black with clouds

3. (adj) black
fig.: Dismal, gloomy, or forbidding, like darkness; destitute of moral light or goodness; atrociously wicked; cruel; mournful; calamitous; horrible

4. (adj) black
expressing menace, or discontent; threatening; sullen; foreboding; as, to regard one with black looks

5. (adj) black
to make black; to blacken; to soil; to sully

6. (adj) black
to make black and shining, as boots or a stove, by applying blacking and then polishing with a brush

7. (adverb) black
sullenly; threateningly; maliciously; so as to produce blackness

8. (noun) black
that which is destitute of light or whiteness; the darkest color, or rather a destitution of all color; as, a cloth has a good black

9. (noun) black
a black pigment or dye

10. (noun) black
a negro; a person whose skin is of a black color, or shaded with black; esp. a member or descendant of certain African races

11. (noun) black
a black garment or dress; as, she wears black

12. (noun) black
mourning garments of a black color; funereal drapery

13. (noun) black
the part of a thing which is distinguished from the rest by being black

14. (noun) black
a stain; a spot; a smooch

Definition of 'black'

Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms

1. black
In intelligence handling, a term used in certain phrases (e.g., living black, black border crossing) to indicate reliance on illegal concealment rather than on cover.

Translation of 'black'

Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary

Sense: of the colour in which these words are printed black paint.
Afrikaans: swart	Arabic: أسْوَد	Bulgarian: черен
Brazilian: preto	Czech: černý	German: schwarz
Danish: sort	Greek: μαύρος	Spanish: negro
Estonian: must	Farsi: مشکی	Finnish: musta
French: noir	Hebrew: שָׁחוֹר	Hindi: काला
Croatian: crn	Hungarian: fekete	Indonesian: hitam
Icelandic: svartur	Italian: nero	Japanese: 黒の
Korean: 검은	Lithuanian: juodas	Latvian: melns
Malay: hitam	Dutch: zwart	Norwegian: svart
Polish: czarny	Persian: مشکی	Pashto: تور
Portuguese: preto	Romanian: negru	Russian: чёрный
Slovak: čierny	Slovenian: črn	Serbian: crn
Swedish: svart	Thai: ดำ	Turkish: siyah, kara
Taiwanese: 黑色的	Ukrainian: чорний	Urdu: سیاہ ، کالا
Vietnamese: màu đen	Chinese: 黑色的
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