black
black
(blăk)
Abbr. bl., blk. adjective
blacker
, blackest
1.
Color. Being of the color black, producing or reflecting comparatively little light and having no predominant hue.
2. Having little or no light: a black, moonless night.
3. Often Black (blăk) a. Of, relating to, or belonging to a racial group having brown to black skin, especially one of African origin: the Black population of South Africa. b. Of, relating to, or belonging to an American ethnic group descended from African peoples having dark skin; African American; Afro-American: "When the history books are written in future generations, the historians will . . . say, There lived a great peoplea black peoplewho injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization" (Martin Luther King, Jr.)."Despite the exposure, being young, gifted and Black in the corridors of power has its trying moments" (Ebony).
4. Very dark in color: rich black soil; black, wavy hair.
5. Soiled, as from soot; dirty: feet black from playing outdoors.
6. Evil; wicked: the pirates' black deeds.
7. Cheerless and depressing; gloomy: black thoughts.
8. Marked by anger or sullenness: gave me a black look.
9. Often Black (blăk) Attended with disaster; calamitous: the stock market crash on Black Friday.
10. Deserving of, indicating, or incurring censure or dishonor: "Man . . . has written one of his blackest records as a destroyer on the oceanic islands" (Rachel Carson).
11. Wearing clothing of the darkest visual hue: the black knight.
12. Served without milk or cream: black coffee.
13. Appearing to emanate from a source other than the actual point of origin. Used chiefly of intelligence operations: black propaganda; black radio transmissions.
14. Disclosed, for reasons of security, only to an extremely limited number of authorized persons; very highly classified: black programs in the Defense Department; the Pentagon's black budget.
15. Chiefly British. Boycotted as part of a labor union action.
noun
1.
Color. a. The achromatic color value of minimum lightness or maximum darkness; the color of objects that absorb nearly all light of all visible wavelengths; one extreme of the neutral gray series, the opposite being white. Although strictly a response to zero stimulation of the retina, the perception of black appears to depend on contrast with surrounding color stimuli. b. A pigment or dye having this color value.
2. Complete or almost complete absence of light; darkness.
3. Clothing of the darkest hue, especially such clothing worn for mourning.
4. Often Black (blăk) a. A member of a racial group having brown to black skin, especially one of African origin. b. An American descended from peoples of African origin having brown to black skin; an African American; an Afro-American: "Many blacks and Hispanics cannot borrow money from banks on subjective grounds" (Jesse Jackson).
5. Something that is colored black.
6. Games. a. The black-colored pieces, as in chess or checkers. b. The player using these pieces.
verb
, transitive
blacked, blacking, blacks
1.
To make black: blacked their faces with charcoal.
2.
To apply blacking to: blacked the stove.
3.
Chiefly British. To boycott as part of a labor union action.
verb
, intransitive
To become black.
phrasal verb.
black out
1.
a. To lose consciousness or memory temporarily: blacked out at the podium. b. To suppress (a fact or memory, for example) from conscious recognition: blacked out many of my wartime experiences.
2. To prohibit the dissemination of, especially by censorship: blacked out the news issuing from the rebel provinces.
3. To extinguish or conceal all lights that might help enemy aircraft find a target during an air raid.
4. To extinguish all the lights on (a stage).
5. To cause a failure of electrical power in: Storm damage blacked out much of the region.
6. a. To withhold (a televised event or program) from a broadcast area: blacked out the football game on local stations. b. To withhold a televised event or program from: will black out the entire state to increase ticket sales for the game.
idiom.
in the black
On the credit side of a ledger; prosperous.
[Middle English blak, from Old English
blæc.]
black
ʹish adjective
black
ʹly adverb
black
ʹness noun
Usage Note:
Black is often capitalized in its use to denote persons, though the lowercased form black is still widely used by authors of all races: "Together, blacks and whites can move our country beyond racism" (Whitney Moore Young, Jr.). Use of the capitalized form has the advantage of acknowledging the parallel with other ethnic groups and nationalities, such as Italian and Sioux. It can be argued that black is different from these other terms because it was derived from an adjective rather than from a proper name. However, a precedent exists for the capitalization of adjectives used to denote specific groups, as in the Reds and the Whites (of the Russian Civil War) or the Greens (the European political party). The capitalization of Black does raise ancillary problems for the treatment of the term white. Orthographic evenhandedness would seem to require the use of the uppercase form White, but this form might be taken to imply that whites constitute a single ethnic group, an issue that is certainly debatable. On the other hand, the use of the lowercase form white in the same context as the uppercase form Black will obviously raise questions as to how and why the writer has distinguished between the two groups. There is no entirely happy solution to this problem. In all likelihood, uncertainty as to the mode of styling of white has dissuaded many publications from adopting the capitalized form Black.