Other forms: blacks
Black is the darkest colour there is — the colour of coal, of a moonless night, of fresh tarmac. A black coat, black ink on white paper, the black squares on a chessboard.
It works as adjective and as noun: you wear black, you paint a door black, the screen goes black. Black coffee and black tea are made without milk, which is the sense that trips learners up. Black also describes people of African descent, and there it is the ordinary, neutral word, written by many people with a capital B. Money and mood take it too: a company in the black is making a profit, a black mood is a bleak one, and a blackout is a loss of light, of memory, or of news. The verb is blacken, and it lands on skies and on reputations.
1adjectivejetOf the darkest colour, like coal or the night sky.
“He wore a black suit and a white shirt.”
synonyms: jet-black, pitch-black
2nounblackThe darkest colour, or clothes of that colour.
“She paints all the shadows in black.”
3adjectivecoffeeOf coffee or tea: served with no milk added.
“Two black coffees, please.”
4adjectiverelatingRelating to people of African descent.
“Many black families moved to the city in the 1950s.”
5adjectivegloomyVery gloomy, bleak or full of despair.
“It was a black day for the whole industry.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
black is a colour.
Old English blæc meant black — and also ink. Further back, Proto-Germanic *blakaz meant 'burnt', which is where the colour comes from: the black of a thing that has been in the fire. The Proto-Indo-European root under it, *bʰleg-, meant 'to burn, shine', the same root that shows up in Latin flagro, 'to burn', and Greek phlox, 'flame'. Burning gave two opposite children: brightness and soot.
Middle English
blak
English, today
black
From Middle English blak. From Middle English blak, black, blake, from Old English blæc (“black, dark", also "ink”), from Proto-West Germanic blak, from Proto-Germanic blakaz (“burnt”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European bʰleg- (“to burn, shine”). See also Dutch blaken (“to burn”), Low German blak, black (“blackness, black paint, (black) ink”), Old High German blah (“black”); also compare Latin flagro (“to burn”), Ancient Greek φλόξ (“flame”), Sanskrit भर्ग (“radiance”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA