I. adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a black/grey cloud
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Black clouds usually mean rain.
battleship grey
black/blue/white/grey smoke
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Black smoke poured out of the engine.
brown/blue/grey/green
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Both their children have blue eyes.
go grey/white etc
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Her hair is starting to go grey.
grey market
grey matter
grey pound
grey British English , gray American English
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She was about 70, with grey hair.
grey British English , gray AmE:
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Rain was starting to fall from the grey sky.
light blue/green/grey etc
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She had blue eyes and light brown hair.
sb’s blonde/dark/grey etc head (= with blonde etc hair )
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I saw my son’s blond head sticking out from the car window.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
area
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Nowhere is it easier to blackmail than in the criminal underworld and the grey areas of conduct that surround it.
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Human beings can't live on grey areas for ever - unless it enters their soul.
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Sometimes a contractual term lies in a grey area between the two.
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There are far too many grey areas with endless different interpretations open to every side.
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There were grey areas in what she had told him - or rather allowed him to believe.
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But outside that grey area Mozart used strokes and dots deliberately for different purposes.
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It was in negotiations concerning these core and grey areas that the major use of computers was made.
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The judgment leaves a large grey area and much scope for argument.
cloud
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Grown men buckle under the fear that these relentless, dancing grey clouds bring.
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But the very humiliation of being summoned turned the grey clouds over her veracity into a full thunderstorm.
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Though the steady march of grey clouds , a tiny square of blue emerges.
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The grey clouds that had prevailed that morning began to break up, promising a fine afternoon.
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Wisps of high grey cloud scarcely moved behind the copper beech.
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Having mated, grey clouds of females glide to the water, lay their eggs, and die.
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Some say the sweat steamed from its back in small grey clouds .
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The wind began to pick up strongly; dense grey clouds skidded across the sky.
flannel
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In his grey flannels and blue blazer-his full sovereign ring-Bob was the opposite of my father.
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Both were wearing grey flannel trousers and pale beige or fawn linen jackets.
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He still wore the grey flannel trousers, white shirt and maroon pullover of his school, but his feet were bare.
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He was neatly dressed in his grey flannel school suit, as if it was an ordinary day.
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Wearing a new sports jacket and grey flannels under his open raincoat.
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Lawrence had already changed from his City clothes into a blazer and grey flannels .
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Navy gaberdine trousers are reduced from £139 to £79 and grey flannel shirt-dresses from £159 to £99.
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The very unattractive grey flannel trousers, who could guess at the legs they hid?
hair
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But be careful, too much powder can make you look like an old granny with grey hair !
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They were dressed in smart charcoal grey suits and had dark grey hair .
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She dealt with a stray wisp of grey hair and pushed her hairpins firmly into place.
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Perhaps I just imagined hearing her moaning a little in the night, and shaking splinters of glass out of her long grey hair .
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The man who emerged was in his late fifties with short grey hair and round, wire-framed glasses.
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Some were real scrambles and gave me hundreds of grey hairs .
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This has ensured that the video is up to date, as well as giving me a few more grey hairs !
light
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As they approach London they let down through the shining white floor of cloud into a dull grey light .
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They left the prison building in the grey light of dawn.
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Through the curtains a soft grey light is creeping.
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Sickness and pride, in the grey light of day, were set in his unchanging face like a mask.
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There was a grey light and the grass was wet with dew.
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A cold grey light made its way round the corners of the curtains and trickled into the room.
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The roads were empty in the grey light , and she jumped traffic lights, making smart time.
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Soon the youngest son emerged into the grey light of the winter land and came silently towards the totem.
man
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The little grey man and the living-room.
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A grey man , thought Shamlou.
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A takeover was under way by the grey men and the only ones who survived it were the grey people.
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Thinking of them, I remembered the sad grey men and the sleek lawyers.
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An underground company that isn't dominated by the grey men in suits.
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He is a grey man in a grey suit.
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The grey man scooped them into his briefcase and snapped it shut.
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It's her father's fault, say the grey men of north Norfolk.
market
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Shares gained up to 24p in grey market trading.
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Investment bankers say that grey markets allow short-selling that drives down a new issue's price.
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What many merchant-bank objectors most dislike is that a grey market limits their freedom to price an issue as they want.
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When Zeneca announced an issue price of 600p, its shares in the grey market shot to 680p.
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On yesterday's new grey market , the shares rose from an issue price of 585p to 612p.
matter
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She wondered if she could think with what was left of her grey matter .
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Engineers have a good helping of functional grey matter with which to devise theories.
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Some of that climber's grey matter has been revived and placed into a robot-climbing machine.
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Could there be a more splendid way to get the grey matter working?
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It just requires a little time and activity from the old grey matter .
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While away those dark winter evenings and exercise the grey matter at the same time!
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More grey matter , more grey suits, more grey faces.
sky
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We saw dead volcanic lakes, grey under the grey sky .
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Beyond the police cars and their orange barrier, smoke veined with flames smudged the grey sky .
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Pouring rain and flat grey sky outside.
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The rain stops and the grey skies begin to clear.
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There was no definite horizon line and the castle seemed to be hanging in the grey sky like a mirage.
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A monochrome landscape, grey under a low grey sky , its horizons blurred by a grey haze.
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The countryside looked like some vision of hell; white, silent fields and black trees against a grey sky .
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The towers of Manhattan seemed almost to be touching the cold grey sky .
slate
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There was another Bentley outside the grey slate Gothic place with a smart yellow Cortina snuggling up against it.
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The pink brick and grey slate was catching the dying rays of the sun.
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It had a grey slate roof and one small chimney, and there were two little windows at the front.
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A white cottage with a grey slate roof and a black chimney and a bright butter-yellow front door.
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The grey slates and shales of the Silurian rock are obvious as you walk.
squirrel
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In the woodland or amongst the ivy, grey squirrels are often found.
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Poisoned wheat is put inside the holder which is designed to let in grey squirrels and exclude other small mammals.
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Since grey squirrels are bigger than red squirrels, many of the male reds have stopped reproducing.
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There was a grey squirrel nipping up and down a hazel tree near the stream.
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The study claims that red squirrels have survived alongside grey squirrels for decades in forests in Norfolk and Staffordshire.
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A grey squirrel , spry after its winter sleep, startled Ben by scampering across his path.
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And Sophia said she had a grey squirrel fur coat too.
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However, in some situations, grey squirrels seem to rely on spatial memory to retrieve nuts.
stone
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Behind a grey stone wall lay a little pool.
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Nicholson looked up at the grey stone building.
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Somewhere in the middle lay the depression of grey stone houses.
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I found an round grey stone , striped with white, but Dad said it was too small.
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Opposite, the fields of the abbey stretched to its grey stone walls.
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A large grey stone mansion, surrounded by rhododendrons.
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A three-storeyed neo-classical frontage of immense length, the ground level is in grey stone , the upper storeys in pale ochre.
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A massive, grey stone Victorian building, it housed over 1600 inmates, twice its allotted amount.
suit
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They were dressed in smart charcoal grey suits and had dark grey hair.
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I put on a dark grey suit with a fine stripe, a grey woollen tie and a soft white shirt.
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The passenger was a short fat man in a grey suit .
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Then, at lunchtime, Mrs Thatcher met a group of the so-called men in grey suits .
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Dressed in a smart, grey suit and black tie, the former Beatle looked very happy.
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She wore her corsage of violets and primroses pinned to the lapel of her grey suit .
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One definitely has a grey suit underneath, and the other is probably the same.
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An everyday grey suit cost me twelve pounds.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
men in (grey) suits
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An underground company that isn't dominated by the grey men in suits.
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And so did the other half-dozen men in suits standing around, fingering the silky negligees.
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Armies of worried men in suits stormed off the Lexington Avenue subway line and marched down the crooked pavements.
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For the rest, we saw only tyrants, technology and men in suits.
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Looking out, she saw men in suits getting into the medium-sized cars.
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Nor was she forced out by the men in grey suits - though intrigue played a major role.
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Then, at lunchtime, Mrs Thatcher met a group of the so-called men in grey suits.
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When he asked for Hugh Sixsmith at the desk, two men in suits climbed quickly from their chairs.
slate blue/grey
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By flaking off successive layers, the tree displays a bark of beige, cinnamon, lime green and slate blue.
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Immature has tail brown but throat white, with most of bill slate blue.
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Matching long-line briefs, £19, s, m, l, Also in classic navy and slate grey.
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Most remarkably it continued to function under California's midday sun, when it's slate grey shell was too hot hold!
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The falls of the flowers are a delicate yellowish green veined with slate blue.
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The sky past his profiled head had gone slate blue above a jagged paleness of snow.
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They were hard pin-points of slate blue beneath bushy eyebrows.
the grey pound
the greying of sth
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Jacob, trim in his dinner-jacket, his dark eyes sparkling darker against the greying of his thick hair.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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Conservatives have started to realize that they cannot take the grey vote for granted.
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It was a grey winter morning.
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the grey power movement in Britain
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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A large grey stone mansion, surrounded by rhododendrons.
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A takeover was under way by the grey men and the only ones who survived it were the grey people.
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By the time he'd finished shifting the chairs, he was wearing grey gloves and a wig.
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He went over to the grey shapes that had been silently watching throughout.
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Immature grey on head and neck with smaller grey ear tufts.
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The grey tenements walled in the space completely.
II. noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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Anna Thomson Jane Green, 25, has been slowly going grey since she was 20.
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Cool grey was also used to shade the face and hair.
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Overhead a seagull circled the treetops, pale feathers shining against the dark grey of a flat sky.
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We will watch the pigeons pass from grey to white, suddenly twitched, like a Venetian blind in the other bedroom.
III. verb
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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He was a powerfully built man, over six feet tall with sleek black hair greying at the temples.
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The dark hair was greying at the sides, but these days some guys do it with a brush.