Definition of Black

black

adj., black·er, black·est.

Being of the color black, producing or reflecting comparatively little light and having no predominant hue.
Having little or no light: a black, moonless night.
often Black
Of or belonging to a racial group having brown to black skin, especially one of African origin: the Black population of South Africa.
Of or belonging to an American ethnic group descended from African peoples having dark skin; African-American.
Very dark in color: rich black soil; black, wavy hair.
Soiled, as from soot; dirty: feet black from playing outdoors.
Evil; wicked: the pirates' black deeds.
Cheerless and depressing; gloomy: black thoughts.
Being or characterized by morbid or grimly satiric humor: a black comedy.
Marked by anger or sullenness: gave me a black look.
Attended with disaster; calamitous: a black day; the stock market crash on Black Friday.
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).
Wearing clothing of the darkest visual hue: the black knight.
Served without milk or cream: black coffee.
Appearing to emanate from a source other than the actual point of origin. Used chiefly of intelligence operations: black propaganda; black radio transmissions.
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.
Chiefly British. Boycotted as part of a labor union action.

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.
A pigment or dye having this color value.
Complete or almost complete absence of light; darkness.
Clothing of the darkest hue, especially such clothing worn for mourning.
often Black
A member of a racial group having brown to black skin, especially one of African origin.
An American descended from peoples of African origin having brown to black skin; an African American.
Something that is colored black.
Games.
The black-colored pieces, as in chess or checkers.
The player using these pieces.

v., blacked, black·ing, blacks.

v.tr.

To make black: blacked their faces with charcoal.
To apply blacking to: blacked the stove.
Chiefly British. To boycott as part of a labor union action.

v.intr.

To become black.

phrasal verb:

black out

To lose consciousness or memory temporarily: blacked out at the podium.
To suppress (a fact or memory, for example) from conscious recognition: blacked out many of my wartime experiences.
To prohibit the dissemination of, especially by censorship: blacked out the news issuing from the rebel provinces.
To extinguish or conceal all lights that might help enemy aircraft find a target during an air raid.
To extinguish all the lights on (a stage).
To cause a failure of electrical power in: Storm damage blacked out much of the region.
To withhold (a televised event or program) from a broadcast area: blacked out the football game on local stations.
To withhold a televised event or program from: blacked out the entire state to increase ticket sales.

idiom:

in the black

On the credit side of a ledger; prosperous.

[Middle English blak, from Old English blæc.]

blackishblack'ishadj.
blacklyblack'lyadv.
blacknessblack'nessn.

USAGE NOTEThe Oxford English Dictionary contains evidence of the use of black with reference to African peoples as early as 1400, and certainly the word has been in wide use in racial and ethnic contexts ever since. However, it was not until the late 1960s that black (or Black) gained its present status as a self-chosen ethnonym with strong connotations of racial pride, replacing the then-current Negro among Blacks and non-Blacks alike with remarkable speed. Equally significant is the degree to which Negro became discredited in the process, reflecting the profound changes taking place in the Black community during the tumultuous years of the civil rights and Black Power movements. The recent success of African American offers an interesting contrast in this regard. Though by no means a modern coinage, African American achieved sudden prominence at the end of the 1980s when several Black leaders, including Jesse Jackson, championed it as an alternative ethnonym for Americans of African descent. The appeal of this term is obvious, alluding as it does not to skin color but to an ethnicity constructed of geography, history, and culture, and it won rapid acceptance in the media alongside similar forms such as Asian American, Hispanic American, and Italian American. But unlike what happened a generation earlier, African American has shown little sign of displacing or discrediting black, which remains both popular and positive. The difference may well lie in the fact that the campaign for African American came at a time of relative social and political stability, when Americans in general and Black Americans in particular were less caught up in issues involving radical change than they were in the 1960s.•Black is sometimes capitalized in its racial sense, especially in the African-American press, though the lowercase form is still widely used by authors of all races. The capitalization of Black does raise ancillary problems for the treatment of the term white. Orthographic evenhandedness would seem to require the use of uppercase White, but this form might be taken to imply that whites constitute a single ethnic group, an issue that is certainly debatable. Uppercase White is also sometimes associated with the writings of white supremacist groups, a sufficient reason of itself for many to dismiss it. On the other hand, the use of lowercase white in the same context as uppercase 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.

Investment Dictionary: Black

A description of a positive balance on a company's financial statements.

Investopedia Says:
The phrase "in the black" is widely used to refer to the condition of companies that have been profitable in their last accounting period. This term is derived from the color of ink used by accountants to enter a positive figure on a company's financial statements.

Related Links:
Learn about the components of the statement of financial position and how they relate to each other. Reading The Balance Sheet
Learn this easy-to-understand technique of analyzing a company's financial statements and reports. Introduction To Fundamental Analysis
Learn what it means to do your homework on a company's performance and reporting practices before investing. Advanced Financial Statement Analysis

Thesaurus : Black

alsoblack out

adjective

Of the darkest achromatic visual value: ebon, ebony, inky, jet, jetty, onyx, pitch-black, pitchy, sable, sooty. Seecolors/colorless.
Having little or no light: dark, pitch-dark. Seelight/darkness.
Covered or stained with or as if with dirt or other impurities: dirty, filthy, grimy, grubby, smutty, soiled, unclean, uncleanly. Seeclean/dirty.
Morally objectionable: bad, evil, immoral, iniquitous, peccant, reprobate, sinful, vicious, wicked, wrong. Seeright/wrong.
Dark and depressing: bleak, blue, cheerless, dark, desolate, dismal, dreary, gloomy, glum, joyless, somber, tenebrific. Seehappy/unhappy, light/darkness.
Characterized by intense ill will or spite: despiteful, evil, hateful, malevolent, malicious, malign, malignant, mean, nasty, poisonous, spiteful, venomous, vicious, wicked. Slangbitchy. Seeattitude/good attitude/bad attitude/neutral attitude.

verb

To make dirty: befoul, begrime, besmirch, besoil, blacken, defile, dirty, smudge, smutch, soil, sully,, clean/dirty.

phrasal verb - black out

To suffer temporary lack of consciousness: faint, keel over, pass out, swoon. Seeawareness/unawareness.
To keep from being published or transmitted: ban, censor, hush (up), stifle, suppress. Idioms: keepputa lid on. Seeshow/hide.

Idioms:

Idioms beginning with black:
black and blue
black as night
black eye
black mark
See also dirty (black) look; in the red (black); look black; paint black; pot calling the kettle black.

Antonyms:black

adj

Definition: angry
Antonyms: happy
adj

Definition: dark, inky
Antonyms: white
adj

Definition: dirty
Antonyms: clean
adj

Definition: evil
Antonyms: good
adj

Definition: hopeless
Antonyms: hopeful, optimistic

US Military Dictionary:black

Top

HomeLibraryHistory, Politics & SocietyUS Military Dictionary

adj. & adv. in intelligence, a term used to indicate reliance on illegal concealment rather than on cover.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details

English Folklore:black

Top

HomeLibraryLiterature & LanguageEnglish Folklore

Many traditional meanings of black are gloomy: night, death, evil, or the Devil. Yet chimney-sweeps are lucky, as is coal, a black cat, and (according to some sources) a single black lamb in a flock (Latham, 1878: 8, 10; Opie and Tatem, 1989: 29). The same is sometimes true of Negroes; one account of the Second World War mentions ‘an African air-raid warden nicknamed Uncle Sam’ who found people believed that because of his colour he was a lucky omen; ‘He once calmed a panic in a shelter of 120 people, in the dark, by shining a torch on his face’ (Norman Longmate, How We Lived Then (1971), 132).
In some seasonal customs, the performers blacken their faces with soot, ashes, or burnt cork (e.g. the Bacup Coconut Dancers, various mummers); this is of course a convenient disguise, but since other easily available substances (flour, chalk) were rarely used, it is likely that black was deliberately chosen. The underlying reason may be the idea that dirt is lucky(see excrement), or it may be because social norms are inverted at festive seasons.

Celtic Mythology:black

Top

HomeLibraryReligion & SpiritualityCeltic Mythology

As in much of European tradition, black is the colour of evil, fear, and death among the Celts. The crow-goddess of the battlefield, Badb, is much associated with blackness in Irish narrative. The killer of Cumhall was the villainous Arca Dubh[Irish, Black Arky], and a one-eyedgiant called the Black Oppressor does battle with the Welsh hero Owain. But black may have other associations. We see splendid Danish knights on parade, clothed in black, in Breuddwyd Rhonabwy [The Dream of Rhonabwy]. More mysteriously, black is seen in juxtaposition with red and white (folk motif: Z65.1), as in the stories of the Welsh Peredur, the Irish Deirdre, or the modern folktale ‘The King of Ireland's Son’. The storytellers explain that black is the blackness of the raven and of a lover's black hair; white the colour of snow and the skin of the lover; red the colour of blood and either the lips or a spot on the cheek of the lover. A later and rather unlikely Christian exegesis is that the three colours evoke the Trinity; further, black is symbolic of the condemnation of God, red is for the Crucifixion, and white for the purification of the spirit.

Veterinary Dictionary:black

Top

HomeLibraryAnimal LifeVeterinary Dictionary

1. without color, at the opposite end of the spectrum to white; the color of soot.
2. a universally accepted coat color. In horses, solid black with no pattern in it, the muzzle is black, and there may be white markings on the lower limbs and the head

Military Dictionary:black

Top

HomeLibraryHistory, Politics & SocietyMilitary Dictionary

(DOD) In intelligence handling, a term used in certain phrases (e.g., living black, black border crossing) to indicate reliance on illegal concealment rather than on cove

Word Tutor:black

Top

HomeLibraryLiterature & LanguageSpelling & Usage

IN BRIEF: The characteristic color of soot or coal; the absence of light.
It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice. — Deng Xiaoping, Chinese premier.

Wikipedia:Black

Top

HomeLibraryMiscellaneousWikipedia

This article is about the color. For other uses, see Black (disambiguation).

— Common connotations —

darkness, secrecy, and mystery; silence and concealment; death (including execution) and bereavement; (with orange) Halloween; end, chaos, and lack; evil, bad luck, and crime; conversely, elegance.

— Color coordinates —

Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflectlight in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light. Although black is sometimes described as an "achromatic", or hueless, color, in practice it can be considered a color, as in expressions like "black cat" or "black paint".

Color or light in science

Nighttime

Black can be defined as the visual impression experienced when no visible light reaches the eye. (This makes a contrast with whiteness, the impression of any combination of colors of light that equally stimulates all three types of color-sensitive visual receptors.)

Pigments that absorb light rather than reflect it back to the eye "look black". A black pigment can, however, result from a combination of several pigments that collectively absorb all colors. If appropriate proportions of three primary pigments are mixed, the result reflects so little light as to be called "black".

This provides two superficially opposite but actually complementary descriptions of black. Black is the lack of all colors of light, or an exhaustive combination of multiple colors of pigment. See also Primary colors

In physics, a black body is a perfect absorber of light, but by a rule derived by Einstein it is also, when heated, the best emitter. Thus, the best radiative cooling, out of sunlight, is by using black paint, though it is important that it be black (a nearly perfect absorber) in the infrared as well.

In elementary science, far Ultraviolet light is called "black light" because, unseen, it causes many minerals and other substances to fluoresce.

On January 16, 2008, researchers from Troy, New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute announced the creation of the darkest material on the planet. The material, which reflects only .045 percent of light, was created from carbon nanotubes stood on end. It absorbs nearly 30 times more light than the current standard for blackness[1], and is 3 times darker than the current record holder for darkest substance. Scientists claim that the new material has great potential in the manufacturing of solar panels.[2]

Absorption of light

Main article: Absorption (electromagnetic radiation)

A material is said to be black if most incoming light is absorbed equally in the material. Light (electromagnetic radiation in the visible spectrum) interacts with the atoms and molecules which causes the energy of the light to be converted in to other forms of energy, usually heat. This means that black surfaces can act as thermal collectors, absorbing light and generating heat(see Solar thermal collector).

Absorption of light is contrasted by transmission, reflection and diffusion, where the light is only redirected, causing objects to appear transparent, reflective or white respectively.

Usage, symbolism, colloquial expressions

/ This article contains embedded lists which may be poorly defined, unverified or indiscriminate. Please help to clean it up to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. (December 2006)

A black cat

Authority and seriousness

Black can be seen as the color of authority and seriousness.

Black Watch is the senior Highland Regiment of the British Army.
In Japanese culture, kuro (black) is a symbol of nobility, age, and experience, as opposed to shiro (white), which symbolizes serfdom, youth, and naiveté. Thus the black belt is a mark of achievement and seniority in many martial arts, whereas in, for example, Shotokan karate, a white belt is a rank-less belt which comes before all other belts. These ranks are called dan.
Black was the color of the Arab dynasty of Abbasidcaliphs, which is the reason black is frequently used in flags of Arab countries.
The riot control units of the Basque Autonomous Police in Spain are known as beltzak ("blacks") after their uniform.
Traditionally, police vehicles (panda cars) were in black and white.

Clothing

Academic dress includes black robes for graduates.
Black tuxedos are worn at formal occasions known as black tie functions.
Black is worn by religious figures within Christianity, e.g. priests (especially of the older religious denominations), monks and nuns.
Black is worn by Hassidic Jews.
Black is worn by some Muslim women; see List of types of sartorial hijab for photographs of examples such as the abaya.
Lawyers and judges often wear black robes.
Many performers of European classical music or other serious art music dress in black for a concert or recital.
Members of the modern goth and some punk subcultures dress predominantly in black (see also goth fashion).

Demography

The term "black" is often used in the West to denote the ethnicity of people whose skin color ranges from light to darker shades of brown. For a discussion of usage, see the main entry at Black people and color terminology for race.

Music

"Black & White", a song by In Flames from their album Reroute To Remain Fourteen Songs of Conscious Insanity.
Paint It, Black is a 1966 hit song by the Rolling Stones.
Metallica's self titled album is known as "The Black Album."
Amy Winehouse's Grammy Award winning song and album Back to Black.
Black metal is a style of music including bands such as Darkthrone and Mayhem.
Johnny Cash was commonly referred to as "The Man in Black" due to his preference for black clothing. His song "Man in Black" presents it as a show of solidarity with the outcasts of society.
The folk song "Black Is the Color (of My True Love's Hair)".
The band AC/DC sang "Back in Black", a song about being successful and ambitious once again.
Black Flag was an American punk rock band formed in 1977 in Hermosa Beach, California that broke up in 1986.
Black or White, the first single off of Michael Jackson's Dangerous album.

Philosophy

In arguments, things can be black-and-white, meaning that the issue at hand is dichotomized (having two clear, opposing sides with no middle ground).
In ancient China, black was the symbol of North and Water, one of the main five colors.

Politics

The List of black flags, although not exclusively political, gives many political meanings.
Black is used for anarchist symbolism, sometimes split in diagonal with other colors to show alignment with another political philosophy.