Word.ws English Dictionary

grey

/ɡɹeɪ/

grey adjective: commonwealth standard spelling of gray.

grey: commonwealth standard spelling of gray
Image: Mizunoryu, Badseed, Jacobolus, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

grey (comparative greyer or more grey, superlative greyest or most grey)

  1. Commonwealth standard spelling of gray.
    • These grey and dun colors may be also produced by mixing whites and blacks.1704, I[saac] N[ewton], “(please specify |book=1 to 3)”, in Opticks: Or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light. […], London: […] Sam[uel] Smith, and Benj[amin]...
    • This is itself a cheerless spot, particularly on a rainy day, when, overshadowed by the great massif of rock that towers in the background, and surrounded by the grey and cheerless quarries, it has a depressing character much in contrast with the green verdure encountered on the northern end of...1954 August, H. M. Madgwick, “The Blaenau Festiniog Tunnel”, in Railway Magazine, page 569
  2. (South Africa, slang) Synonym of coloured (pertaining to the mixed race of black and white).
    Synonyms:
    coloured

Verb

grey (third-person singular simple present greys, present participle greying, simple past and past participle greyed)

  1. Commonwealth standard spelling of gray.
    • Now only a few hand-hewn cedar planks and roof beams remained, moss-grown and sagging—a few totem poles, greyed and split.1941, Emily Carr, chapter 18, in Klee Wyck

Noun (1)

grey (plural greys)

  1. Commonwealth standard spelling of gray.
    • Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day, / That costs thy life, my gallant grey.1810, Walter Scott, “(please specify the canto number or page)”, in The Lady of the Lake; […], Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for John Ballantyne and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and...
    • Pioneer seemed now to have the game in his own hands; but the Captain, by taking two desperate leaps, cut off a corner, by which he regained the ground he had lost by the fall, and was up with the grey the remainder of the chase.1833, Sporting Magazine, volume 6, page 400

Proper noun capitalized: Grey

Grey (countable and uncountable, plural Greys)

  1. A surname transferred from the nickname, alternative spelling of Gray.
  2. A rural municipality (the Rural Municipality of Grey) in south-central Manitoba, Canada, named after Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey.
  3. A river in the West Coast Region, South Island, New Zealand; in full, Grey River.
  4. A territorial authority, Grey District, on the West Coast, New Zealand, the successor of Grey County.
  5. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Grey County.
  6. (abbreviation, ellipsis, informal, Durham University) Ellipsis of Grey College, Durham.
  7. An English earldom.

Noun (2) capitalized: Grey

Grey (plural Greys)

  1. (UK, historical, in plural) A member of the Royal Scots Greys, a cavalry regiment of the British Army from 1707 to 1971.

Examples of grey in a sentence

  • He dyed his hair black last month, so the grey roots can be seen.
  • And my eyes are weird green grey. More greeny blue in daylight.
  • Flosses are soft, and grey from the female and black from the male.

All 40 example sentences with grey

Synonyms of grey

Forms of grey

Adjective
comparativegreyer
comparativemore grey
superlativegreyest
superlativemost grey
Verb
third-person singular presentgreys
present participlegreying
past participlegreyed
pastgreyed
Noun
pluralgreys
pluralGreys
Proper noun
pluralGreys

Origin of grey

From Middle English grey, from Old English grēġ (Anglian). The spelling grey reflects the Anglian vowel development, whereas the variant gray stems from the West Saxon form grǣġ (through Middle English gray). Further derived from Proto-Germanic *grēwaz (compare Dutch grauw, German grau, Old Norse grár), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰreh₁- (“to green, to grow”) (compare Latin rāvus (“grey”), Old Church Slavonic зьрѭ (zĭrjǫ, “to see, to glance”), Russian зреть (zretʹ, “to watch, to look at”) (archaic), Lithuanian žeriù (“to shine”)).

Words formed from grey

Phrases with grey

152 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with grey

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about grey

What does grey mean?
Grey means commonwealth standard spelling of gray.
What part of speech is grey?
Grey can be an adjective, a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce grey?
Grey is pronounced /ɡɹeɪ/ (UK).

Words near grey in the dictionary

  1. grex
  2. grex name
  3. grex names
  4. grexes
  5. Grexit
  6. grey
  7. grey alder
  8. grey alders
  9. grey alien
  10. grey aliens
  11. grey amber

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grey (page history and authors); Grey (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-uk-grey.ogg, en-us-gray.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-PerfectSoundWhatever-grey.wav.

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