shade [OE] The Old English word shade is related to shadow, both going back to the same Indo-European root. Shady [L16th] developed a colloquial use meaning ‘questionable, disreputable’ in the mid 19th century perhaps from university slang. The origins of shades of, used to suggest that one thing is reminiscent of another, have nothing to do with colour but go back to the early 17th-century use of shade to mean ‘a ghost’. The idea behind the phrase is that the person or event either resembles or calls to mind someone or something from the past. By the late 19th century the meaning ‘ghost’ was more or less restricted to works of literature.