Word.ws English Dictionary

grey area

grey area noun: an area intermediate between two mutually exclusive states or categories, where the border between the two is fuzzy or ill-defined.

Noun

grey area (plural grey areas)

  1. (idiomatic) An area intermediate between two mutually exclusive states or categories, where the border between the two is fuzzy or ill-defined.
    • It exists in a grey area between legal and illegal.
  2. (idiomatic) A topic that is not clearly one thing or the other, that is open to interpretation.
    • Fame is a grey area[.]2007 May, Men's Health, volume 22, number 4, page 94
    Synonyms:
    penumbra

Synonyms of grey area

Antonyms

Forms of grey area

pluralgrey areas
alternative formgray area

Origin of grey area

Because grey is a blend of black and white.

Questions about grey area

What does grey area mean?
Grey area means an area intermediate between two mutually exclusive states or categories, where the border between the two is fuzzy or ill-defined.
What part of speech is grey area?
Grey area is a noun.
What is the plural of grey area?
The plural of grey area is grey areas.

Words near grey area in the dictionary

  1. grey alders
  2. grey alien
  3. grey aliens
  4. grey amber
  5. grey ammonia
  6. grey area
  7. grey areas
  8. grey asexual
  9. grey baby syndrome
  10. grey belt
  11. grey box

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grey area (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-grey area.ogg.

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