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greying

adjectiveB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Greying means turning grey with age. Greying at the temples, greying hair.

Each hair turns rather than fading, since the follicle simply stops making pigment. When greying begins is mostly inherited and has nothing to do with stress, whatever people say.

Definitions of greying

  1. 1adjectivegreyingTurning grey with age.B2

    “He was greying at thirty and entirely grey by fifty.”

greying is a quality.

Also accepted in games: graying

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *gʰreh₁-

  2. Middle English

    grey

  3. English

    grey

  4. English, today

    greying

grey comes from Middle English grey. From Middle English grey, from Old English grēġ (Anglian). The spelling grey reflects the Anglian vowel development, whereas the variant gray stems from the West Saxon form grǣġ (through Middle English gray). Further derived from Proto-Germanic grēwaz (compare Dutch grauw, German grau, Old Norse grár), from Proto-Indo-European ǵʰreh₁- (“to green, to grow”) (compare Latin rāvus (“grey”), cu зьрѭ (“to see, to glance”), Russian зреть (“to watch, to look at”) (archaic), Lithuanian žeriù (“to shine”)).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Hair & Grooming

Practise this word

greying in the wild

  • Eumelanin (the pigment making up the stripes) can be affected by: merle (and harlequin), liver, dilution, greying, and recessive red.

    Brindle

  • Although a number of cases of rapid hair greying have been documented, the underlying patho-physiological changes have not been sufficiently studied.

    Canities subita

  • Nasya panchakarma therapy is very useful to address the disease related to head region, e.g. insomnia, stress, anxiety, early greying of hair, allergies.

    Nasya

  • Premature greying of hair is the process of greying of hair occurring at an unusually early age.

    Premature greying of hair

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.