Word.ws English Dictionary

gray matter

gray matter is the alternative spelling of grey matter.

Meaning of grey matter

Noun

grey matter (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) Brains; a person's ability to think.
    • "I'd better be putting my grey matter into that algebra instead of wasting it plotting for a party dress that I certainly can't get."1904, Lucy Maud Montgomery, “Penelope's Party Waist”, in Short Stories: 1904
  2. Literal brains as a general substance.
    • He fell from the 5th floor. There is grey matter on the path behind his head. I'm afraid he's dead.
  3. A collection of cell bodies and (usually) dendritic connections, in contrast to white matter.

Questions about gray matter

What is gray matter the alternative spelling of?
Gray matter is the alternative spelling of grey matter.

Words near gray matter in the dictionary

  1. gray man
  2. gray market
  3. gray marketeer
  4. gray marketeers
  5. gray markets
  6. gray matter
  7. gray men
  8. gray mullet
  9. gray mullets
  10. gray night
  11. gray nights

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gray matter (page history and authors); grey matter (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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Cite this entry: “gray matter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gray_matter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.