grey [OE] An Old English word that since the Middle Ages has been used to describe the weather when the sky is overcast. The extension of this to mean ‘dismal or sad’ dates from the early 18th century. A grey area is an ill-defined situation which does not readily fit into an existing category. It is so called because it is ‘not black or white’, and cannot be simply analysed or put into a single category. The expression was first used in the late 1930s in reference to an intermediate area between opposing positions, but grey zone had been used by 1900, and grey used on its own to describe something ambiguous by the mid 19th century. The name of the greyhound has nothing to do with the colour grey. It comes from Old English grighund, which meant ‘bitch hound’. From the mid 19th century an ocean greyhound was a steamship specially built for great speed.