Word.ws English Dictionary

black tie

black tie noun: a black bow tie worn with a dinner jacket.

Noun

black tie (countable and uncountable, plural black ties)

  1. (countable) A black bow tie worn with a dinner jacket.
  2. (uncountable) Evening dress; a standard of dress which is less formal than white tie, consisting of black dinner jacket or tuxedo jacket, and matching trousers, white shirt and black bow tie or, possibly, military dress or national costume.
    • You are cordially invited to the Social Club's tenth Anniversary Celebration of its Brick-and-Mortar Building. Dress: Black Tie and White Tie are encouraged, but optional.
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see black, tie.

Forms of black tie

pluralblack ties

Questions about black tie

What does black tie mean?
Black tie means a black bow tie worn with a dinner jacket.
What part of speech is black tie?
Black tie is a noun.
What is the plural of black tie?
The plural of black tie is black ties.

Words near black tie in the dictionary

  1. black terns
  2. black tetra
  3. black thumb
  4. black thumbs
  5. Black Thursday
  6. black tie
  7. black ties
  8. black tin
  9. black tinamou
  10. black tinamous
  11. black toad

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black tie (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-black tie.wav.

Cite this entry: “black tie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/black_tie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.