gray man
gray man noun: an average, forgettable man who does not draw attention or stand out in a crowd.
Noun
gray man (plural gray men)
- An average, forgettable man who does not draw attention or stand out in a crowd.
- He was said to be a perfect match for his own description of the ideal intelligence officer, "the traditional gray man, so inconspicuous that he can never catch a waiter's eye in a restaurant."1996, "Colby's Body Found Along River Shore", Washington Post, Todd Shields, ISSN 0190-8286
- But perhaps that is why he was chosen for his role — a gray man who blended almost invisibly into the background.2000, "Cassidy's Run: The Secret Spy War Over Nerve Gas", David Wise, pg.13-3, →ISBN
- Synonyms:
- little gray man, little grey man
Examples of gray man in a sentence
- "Gray man" is an espionage term describing the "perfect" covert operator.2003, Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency, W. Thomas Smith, →ISBN, page 113:
- “Your goal is to be the gray man,” says Clinton Emerson, a former Navy SEAL and trainer for the CIA and NSA who now works at the special-ops site SOFREP.2012, "Spycraft for Nerds: Brainy Tips for Winning at Life", Wired Magazine, Mary H.K. Choi, ISSN 1059-1028
- A gray man in a gray suit slips through the shadows in a black-and-white world carrying encrypted secrets.2016, “‘Bridge of Spies’: The True Story is Even Stranger Than Fiction”, in ProPublica:
- The Gray Man does not stand out negatively amongst the instructors, but receives good peer evaluations from his classmates.2017, "How Special Ops Instructors View Candidates", Military, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Stew Smith, archived at Wayback Machine...
Synonyms of gray man
- little gray man
- little grey man
Forms of gray man
| plural | gray men |
|---|---|
| alternative form | grey man |
Origin of gray man
From gray (“bland, indistinct”) + man (“person”).
Questions about gray man
- What does gray man mean?
- Gray man means an average, forgettable man who does not draw attention or stand out in a crowd.
- How do you use gray man in a sentence?
- "Gray man" is an espionage term describing the "perfect" covert operator.
- What part of speech is gray man?
- Gray man is a noun.
- What is the plural of gray man?
- The plural of gray man is gray men.
Words near gray man in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gray man (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:
Cite this entry: “gray man.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gray_man. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.