Black - Definition

adj 1: being of the achromatic color of maximum darkness; having
little or no hue owing to absorption of almost all
incident light; "black leather jackets"; "as black as
coal"; "rich black soil" [ant: white]
2: of or belonging to a racial group having dark skin especially
of sub-Saharan African origin; "a great people--a black
people--...injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of
civilization"- Martin Luther King Jr. [ant: white]
3: marked by anger or resentment or hostility; "black looks";
"black words"
4: offering little or no hope; "the future looked black";
"prospects were bleak"; "Life in the Aran Islands has always
been bleak and difficult"- J.M.Synge; "took a dim view of
things" [syn: black, bleak, dim]
5: stemming from evil characteristics or forces; wicked or
dishonorable; "black deeds"; "a black lie"; "his black heart
has concocted yet another black deed"; "Darth Vader of the
dark side"; "a dark purpose"; "dark undercurrents of ethnic
hostility"; "the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on
punishing him"-Thomas Hardy [syn: black, dark,
sinister]
6: (of events) having extremely unfortunate or dire
consequences; bringing ruin; "the stock market crashed on
Black Friday"; "a calamitous defeat"; "the battle was a
disastrous end to a disastrous campaign"; "such doctrines, if
true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory"- Charles
Darwin; "it is fatal to enter any war without the will to win
it"- Douglas MacArthur; "a fateful error" [syn: black,
calamitous, disastrous, fatal, fateful]
7: (of the face) made black especially as with suffused blood;
"a face black with fury" [syn: black, blackened]
8: extremely dark; "a black moonless night"; "through the pitch-
black woods"; "it was pitch-dark in the cellar" [syn:
black, pitch-black, pitch-dark]
9: harshly ironic or sinister; "black humor"; "a grim joke";
"grim laughter"; "fun ranging from slapstick clowning ... to
savage mordant wit" [syn: black, grim, mordant]
10: (of intelligence operations) deliberately misleading; "black
propaganda"
11: distributed or sold illicitly; "the black economy pays no
taxes" [syn: bootleg, black, black-market,
contraband, smuggled]
12: (used of conduct or character) deserving or bringing
disgrace or shame; "Man...has written one of his blackest
records as a destroyer on the oceanic islands"- Rachel
Carson; "an ignominious retreat"; "inglorious defeat"; "an
opprobrious monument to human greed"; "a shameful display of
cowardice" [syn: black, disgraceful, ignominious,
inglorious, opprobrious, shameful]
13: (of coffee) without cream or sugar
14: soiled with dirt or soot; "with feet black from playing
outdoors"; "his shirt was black within an hour" [syn:
black, smutty]
n 1: the quality or state of the achromatic color of least
lightness (bearing the least resemblance to white) [syn:
black, blackness, inkiness] [ant: white,
whiteness]
2: total absence of light; "they fumbled around in total
darkness"; "in the black of night" [syn: total darkness,
lightlessness, blackness, pitch blackness, black]
3: British chemist who identified carbon dioxide and who
formulated the concepts of specific heat and latent heat
(1728-1799) [syn: Black, Joseph Black]
4: popular child actress of the 1930's (born in 1928) [syn:
Black, Shirley Temple Black, Shirley Temple]
5: a person with dark skin who comes from Africa (or whose
ancestors came from Africa) [syn: Black, Black person,
blackamoor, Negro, Negroid]
6: (board games) the darker pieces [ant: white]
7: black clothing (worn as a sign of mourning); "the widow wore
black"
v 1: make or become black; "The smoke blackened the ceiling";
"The ceiling blackened" [syn: blacken, melanize,
melanise, nigrify, black] [ant: white, whiten]