black [OE] Since the Middle Ages the word black has had connotations of gloom, foreboding, and anger, and since Shakespeare’s time it has been associated with wickedness. It is also a perennially stylish colour, and the little black dress has been a byword of fashion from the very beginning of the 20th century. The car manufacturer Henry Ford was not motivated by any of these associations when he said of his Model T Ford, ‘Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black’—nor was he trying to impose uniformity. Black simply dried quicker than any other paint. To blackball [L18th] derives from the practice of registering an adverse vote by placing a black ball in a ballot box. Black sheep [L18th] comes from the proverb there is a black sheep in every flock. Blackguard [E16th] was originally a two-word phrase for a body of attendants or servants, especially menials who were responsible for the kitchen utensils, but the exact significance of the epithet ‘black’ is uncertain. The sense ‘scoundrel, villain’ dates from the mid 18th century, and was formerly considered highly offensive.

To be in someone’s black books is to be out of favour. Since the 15th century various types of official book were known as black books, especially those used to note down misdemeanours and punishments. The relevant books here are probably the black-bound books in which Henry VIII’s commissioners recorded accounts of scandals and corruption within the English monasteries in the 1530s. These books provided the evidence to support Henry’s plan of breaking with the Pope and the Church of Rome, allowing him to dissolve the monasteries.

Not all things called black are black in colour. An aircraft’s black box [1960s], its flight recorder, for instance, is not. Black here refers to the mystifying nature of the device to anyone but an aeronautical engineer. The first use of black box is as RAF slang for a navigational instrument in an aircraft which allowed the pilot and crew to locate bombing targets in poor visibility in the 1940s. See also plague.