black

adjective

1)

a black horse

Syn:

dark, pitch-black, jet-black, coal-black, ebony, sable, inky

Ant:

white

2)

a black night

Syn:

unlit, dark, starless, moonless, wan; literary tenebrous, Stygian

Ant:

clear, bright

3)

thirty-seven percent of our advanced-study students are black

See note below

4)

the blackest day of the war

Syn:

tragic, disastrous, calamitous, catastrophic, cataclysmic, fateful, wretched, woeful, awful, terrible; formal grievous

Ant:

joyful

5)

Mary was in a black mood

Syn:

miserable, unhappy, sad, wretched, broken-hearted, heartbroken, grief-stricken, grieving, sorrowful, sorrowing, anguished, desolate, despairing, disconsolate, downcast, dejected, sullen, cheerless, melancholy, morose, gloomy, glum, mournful, doleful, funereal, dismal, forlorn, woeful, abject; informal blue; literary dolorous

Ant:

cheerful

6)

black humor

Syn:

cynical, macabre, weird, unhealthy, ghoulish, morbid, perverted, gruesome; informal sick

7)

a black look

Syn:

angry, vexed, cross, irritated, incensed

See also angry 1)

Ant:

pleased

8) archaic

a black deed

Syn:

wicked, evil, heinous, villainous, bad

See also wicked 1)

Ant:

virtuous

•

- black out

- black something out

- in the black

- black and white

••

black

Black, designating Americans of African heritage, became the most widely used and accepted term in the 1960s and 1970s, replacing Negro. It is not usually capitalized: black Americans. Through the 1980s, the more formal African American replaced black in much usage, but both are now generally acceptable. Afro-American, an earlier alternative to black, is heard mostly in anthropological and cultural contexts. Colored people, common earlier in the twentieth century, is now usually regarded as derogatory, although the phrase survives in the full name of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. An inversion, people of color, has gained some favor, but is also used in reference to other nonwhite ethnic groups: a gathering spot for African Americans and other people of color interested in reading about their cultures.