Etymograph

English

grey

Grey comes from Old English grēġ (Anglian), from Proto-West Germanic *grāu, from Proto-Germanic *grēwaz ‘grey’.

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*grēwaz1‘grey’reconstructed
  2. Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*grāu1‘grey’reconstructed
  3. Old Englishc. 450–1150grēġ1‘grey’
  4. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500grey1‘grey’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 1704grey1

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, English grey
  2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1704, Isaac Newton, (please specify |book=1 to 3): “These grey and dun colors may be also produced…”.

Lineage

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*grēwazWiktionary, English grey‘grey’reconstructed
  2. Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*grāuWiktionary, English grey‘grey’reconstructed
  3. Old Englishc. 450–1150grēġWiktionary, English grey‘grey’
  4. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500greyWiktionary, English grey‘grey’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 1704greyWiktionary, English grey. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1704, Isaac Newton, (please specify |book=1 to 3): “These grey and dun colors may be also produced…”

The story

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’), Old Church Slavonic зьрѭ (zĭrjǫ, “to see, to glance”), Russian зреть (zretʹ, “to watch, to look at”) (archaic), Lithuanian žeriù (‘to shine’)).

Full etymology on Wiktionary

Word family

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

through Proto-West Germanic *grāg

through Middle English grey ‘grey, dull, drab (in color)’

Explore everything descended from *grēwaz →

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Today it means

adj Commonwealth standard spelling of gray.

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “grey”. 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 *grēwaz / grey