Etymograph

English

black

Black comes from Old English blæc ‘black, dark; ink’, and ultimately from Proto-Germanic *blakaz ‘burnt’.

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*blakaz1‘burnt’reconstructed
  2. Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*blak1‘burnt’reconstructed
  3. Old Englishc. 450–1150blæc1‘black, dark; ink’
  4. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500blak1
  5. Englishearliest quotation c. 1595–1596black1

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, English black
  2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: c. 1595–1596, William Shakespeare, Loues Labour’s Lost: “Black is the badge of hell, / The hue…”.

Lineage

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*blakazWiktionary, English black‘burnt’reconstructed
  2. Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*blakWiktionary, English black‘burnt’reconstructed
  3. Old Englishc. 450–1150blæcWiktionary, English black‘black, dark; ink’
  4. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500blakWiktionary, English black
  5. Englishearliest quotation c. 1595–1596blackWiktionary, English black. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: c. 1595–1596, William Shakespeare, Loues Labour’s Lost: “Black is the badge of hell, / The hue…”

The story

Adjective sense 20 is a semantic loan from Cantonese 黑面 (hak1 min6, “to pull a long face, to scowl”).

Full etymology on Wiktionary

Word family

English words that share an ancestor with black, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.

through Old English blæc ‘black, dark", also "ink’

through Middle English blak

1 more relative in the full family tree

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Today it means

adj Absorbing all light and reflecting none; dark and hueless.

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “black”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Proto-Germanic *blakaz / black