Black , Hugo La Fayette. 1886-1971.
American jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1937-1971). He was noted for his ardent support of civil rights.
Black, Sir James Whyte. Born 1924.
British pharmacologist. He shared a 1988 Nobel Prize for developing drugs to treat heart disease and stomach and duodenal ulcers.
Black, Joseph. 1728-1799.
British chemist who rediscovered carbon dioxide (1756) and formulated the concepts of latent heat and specific heat.
Black, Shirley Temple. Born 1928.
American actress and public official. As Shirley Temple she was an immensely popular child actress of the 1930s, starring in films such as Bright Eyes (1934). As an adult she has held several diplomatic positions, including ambassador to Ghana (1974-1976).
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.
black
n.
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.
black
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.
black
[Middle English blak, from Old English blęc. See bhel-1 in Indo-European Roots.]
blackish adj.
blackly adv.
blackness n.
Usage Note: The 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.
black
\Black\, a. [OE. blak, AS. bl[ae]c; akin to Icel. blakkr dark, swarthy, Sw. bl["a]ck ink, Dan. bl[ae]k, OHG. blach, LG. & D. blaken to burn with a black smoke. Not akin to AS. bl[=a]c, E. bleak pallid. ?98.] 1. Destitute of light, or incapable of reflecting it; of the color of soot or coal; of the darkest or a very dark color, the opposite of white; characterized by such a color; as, black cloth; black hair or eyes.
O night, with hue so black! --Shak.
2. In a less literal sense: Enveloped or shrouded in darkness; very dark or gloomy; as, a black night; the heavens black with clouds.
I spy a black, suspicious, threatening cloud. --Shak.
3. Fig.: Dismal, gloomy, or forbidding, like darkness; destitute of moral light or goodness; atrociously wicked; cruel; mournful; calamitous; horrible. ``This day's black fate.'' ``Black villainy.'' ``Arise, black vengeance.'' ``Black day.'' ``Black despair.'' --Shak.
4. Expressing menace, or discontent; threatening; sullen; foreboding; as, to regard one with black looks.
Note: Black is often used in self-explaining compound words; as, black-eyed, black-faced, black-haired, black-visaged.
Black act, the English statute 9 George I, which makes it a felony to appear armed in any park or warren, etc., or to hunt or steal deer, etc., with the face blackened or disguised. Subsequent acts inflicting heavy penalties for malicious injuries to cattle and machinery have been called black acts.
Black angel (Zo["o]l.), a fish of the West Indies and Florida (Holacanthus tricolor), with the head and tail yellow, and the middle of the body black.
Black antimony (Chem.), the black sulphide of antimony, Sb2S3, used in pyrotechnics, etc.
Black bear (Zo["o]l.), the common American bear (Ursus Americanus).
Black beast. See B[^e]te noire.
Black beetle (Zo["o]l.), the common large cockroach (Blatta orientalis).
Black and blue, the dark color of a bruise in the flesh, which is accompanied with a mixture of blue. ``To pinch the slatterns black and blue.'' --Hudibras.
Black bonnet (Zo["o]l.), the black-headed bunting (Embriza Sch[oe]niclus) of Europe.
Black canker, a disease in turnips and other crops, produced by a species of caterpillar.
Black cat (Zo["o]l.), the fisher, a quadruped of North America allied to the sable, but larger. See Fisher.
Black cattle, any bovine cattle reared for slaughter, in distinction from dairy cattle. [Eng.]
Black cherry. See under Cherry.
Black cockatoo (Zo["o]l.), the palm cockatoo. See Cockatoo.
Black copper. Same as Melaconite.
Black currant. (Bot.) See Currant.
Black diamond. (Min.) See Carbonado.
Black draught (Med.), a cathartic medicine, composed of senna and magnesia.
Black drop (Med.), vinegar of opium; a narcotic preparation consisting essentially of a solution of opium in vinegar.
Black earth, mold; earth of a dark color. --Woodward.
Black flag, the flag of a pirate, often bearing in white a skull and crossbones; a signal of defiance.
Black flea (Zo["o]l.), a flea beetle (Haltica nemorum) injurious to turnips.
Black flux, a mixture of carbonate of potash and charcoal, obtained by deflagrating tartar with half its weight of niter. --Brande & C.
Black fly. (Zo["o]l.) (a) In the United States, a small, venomous, two-winged fly of the genus Simulium of several species, exceedingly abundant and troublesome in the northern forests. The larv[ae] are aquatic. (b) A black plant louse, as the bean aphis (A. fab[ae]).
Black Forest [a translation of G. Schwarzwald], a forest in Baden and W["u]rtemburg, in Germany; a part of the ancient Hercynian forest.
Black game, or Black grouse. (Zo["o]l.) See Blackcock, Grouse, and Heath grouse.
Black grass (Bot.), a grasslike rush of the species Juncus Gerardi, growing on salt marshes, and making good hay.
Black gum (Bot.), an American tree, the tupelo or pepperidge. See Tupelo.
Black Hamburg (grape) (Bot.), a sweet and juicy variety of dark purple or ``black'' grape.
Black horse (Zo["o]l.), a fish of the Mississippi valley (Cycleptus elongatus), of the sucker family; the Missouri sucker.
Black lemur (Zo["o]l.), the Lemurniger of Madagascar; the acoumbo of the natives.
Black list, a list of persons who are for some reason thought deserving of censure or punishment; -- esp. a list of persons stigmatized as insolvent or untrustworthy, made for the protection of tradesmen or employers. See Blacklist, v. t.
Black manganese (Chem.), the black oxide of manganese, MnO2.
Black Maria, the close wagon in which prisoners are carried to or from jail.
Black martin (Zo["o]l.), the chimney swift. See Swift.
Black moss (Bot.), the common so-called long moss of the southern United States. See Tillandsia.
Black oak. See under Oak.
Black ocher. See Wad.
Black pigment, a very fine, light carbonaceous substance, or lampblack, prepared chiefly for the manufacture of printers' ink. It is obtained by burning common coal tar.
Black plate, sheet iron before it is tinned. --Knight.
Black quarter, malignant anthrax with engorgement of a shoulder or quarter, etc., as of an ox.
Black rat (Zo["o]l.), one of the species of rats (Mus rattus), commonly infesting houses.
Black rent. See Blackmail, n., 3.
Black rust, a disease of wheat, in which a black, moist matter is deposited in the fissures of the grain.
Black sheep, one in a family or company who is unlike the rest, and makes trouble.
Black silver. (Min.) See under Silver.
Black and tan, black mixed or spotted with tan color or reddish brown; -- used in describing certain breeds of dogs.
Black tea. See under Tea.
Black tin (Mining), tin ore (cassiterite), when dressed, stamped and washed, ready for smelting. It is in the form of a black powder, like fine sand. --Knight.
Black walnut. See under Walnut.
Black warrior (Zo["o]l.), an American hawk (Buteo Harlani).
Syn: Dark; murky; pitchy; inky; somber; dusky; gloomy; swart; Cimmerian; ebon; atrocious.
black
\Black\, adv. Sullenly; threateningly; maliciously; so as to produce blackness.
black
\Black\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Blacked; p. pr. & vb. n. Blacking.] [See Black, a., and cf. Blacken.] 1. To make black; to blacken; to soil; to sully.
They have their teeth blacked, both men and women, for they say a dog hath his teeth white, therefore they will black theirs. --Hakluyt.
Sins which black thy soul. --J. Fletcher.
2. To make black and shining, as boots or a stove, by applying blacking and then polishing with a brush.
black
\Black\, n. 1. That which is destitute of light or whiteness; the darkest color, or rather a destitution of all color; as, a cloth has a good black.
Black is the badge of hell, The hue of dungeons, and the suit of night. --Shak.
2. A black pigment or dye.
3. A negro; a person whose skin is of a black color, or shaded with black; esp. a member or descendant of certain African races.
4. A black garment or dress; as, she wears black; pl. (Obs.) Mourning garments of a black color; funereal drapery.
Friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like show death terrible. --Bacon.
That was the full time they used to wear blacks for the death of their fathers. --Sir T. North.
5. The part of a thing which is distinguished from the rest by being black.
The black or sight of the eye. --Sir K. Digby.
6. A stain; a spot; a smooch.
Defiling her white lawn of chastity with ugly blacks of lust. --Rowley.
Black and white, writing or print; as, I must have that statement in black and white.
Blue black, a pigment of a blue black color.
Ivory black, a fine kind of animal charcoal prepared by calcining ivory or bones. When ground it is the chief ingredient of the ink used in copperplate printing.
Berlin black. See under Berlin.
black
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" [syn: achromatic] [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: 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: 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: calamitous, disastrous, fatal, fateful]
7: (of the face) made black especially as with suffused blood; "a face black with fury" [syn: blackened]
8: extremely dark; "a black moonless night"; "through the pitch-black woods"; "it was pitch-dark in the celler" [syn: 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: grim, mordant]
10: (of intelligence operations) deliberately misleading; "black propaganda"
11: distributed or sold illicitly; "the black economy pays no taxes [syn: bootleg, 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: disgraceful, ignominious, inglorious, opprobrious, shameful]
13: (of coffee) without cream or sugar
14: dressed in black; "a black knight"; "black friars"
15: soiled with dirt or soot; "with feet black from playing outdoors"; "his shirt was black within an hour"
n 1: the quality or state of the achromatic color of least lightness (bearing the least resemblance to white) [syn: blackness] [ant: white]
2: total absence of light; "they fumbled around in total darkness"; "in the black of night" [syn: total darkness, lightlessness, blackness]
3: a person with dark skin who comes from Africa (or whose ancestors came from Africa) [syn: Black, black person, blackamoor, Negro, Negroid]
4: (chess or checkers) the darker-colored pieces
5: black clothing (worn as a sign of mourning)
v : make or become black; "The smoke blackened the ceiling"; "The ceiling blackened" [syn: blacken, melanize, nigrify] [ant: whiten]
black
black, AL (town, FIPS 7120)
Location: 31.00939 N, 85.74321 W
Population (1990): 174 (80 housing units)
Area: 8.0 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water)
Zip code(s): 36314
black, MO
Zip code(s): 63625
black, TX
Zip code(s): 79035
black
properly the absence of all colour. In Prov. 7:9 the Hebrew word means, as in
the margin of the Revised Version, "the pupil of the eye." It is translated
"apple" of the eye in Deut. 32:10; Ps. 17:8; Prov. 7:2. It is a different word
which is rendered "black" in Lev. 13:31,37; Cant. 1:5; 5:11; and Zech. 6:2, 6.
It is uncertain what the "black marble" of Esther 1:6 was which formed a part
of the mosaic pavement.
Entry: black out
Function: verb
Definition: cover
Synonyms: conceal, cover up, cut off, darken, eclipse, eradicate, erase, hold back, make dark, obfuscate, rub out, shade, squash, squelch
Antonyms: uncover
Concept: darkness
Entry: black out
Function: verb
Definition: faint
Synonyms: collapse, lose consciousness, pass out, slip, swoon, zone out
Antonyms: come to, resuscitate, revive
Concept: health (poor)