Word.ws English Dictionary

gray hat

gray hat noun: a morally ambiguous character; an antihero.

Noun

gray hat (plural gray hats)

  1. (idiomatic) A morally ambiguous character; an antihero.
  2. (slang, computer security) A hybrid between a white hat and a black hat hacker, who hacks for no personal gain, and does not have malicious intentions, but does sometimes commit crimes.

Forms of gray hat

pluralgray hats
alternative formgrayhat
alternative formgrey hat
alternative formgreyhat

Origin of gray hat

From being grey (“gray”), a mix between black and white, morally grey/gray. From white hat + black hat. From cowboy country and western fiction, where good guys wear white Stetson hats with light attire, and bad guys wear black ones with black attire. From chivalric fiction, with white knights and black knights. From the association of the color white with good and black with evil.

Questions about gray hat

What does gray hat mean?
Gray hat means a morally ambiguous character; an antihero.
What part of speech is gray hat?
Gray hat is a noun.
What is the plural of gray hat?
The plural of gray hat is gray hats.

Words near gray hat in the dictionary

  1. gray ghosts
  2. gray gold
  3. gray goo
  4. gray ground squirrel
  5. gray ground squirrels
  6. gray hat
  7. gray hats
  8. gray hen
  9. gray hens
  10. gray hydrogen
  11. gray iron

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gray hat (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-gray hat.ogg.

Cite this entry: “gray hat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gray_hat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.