ashy

comparative ashier · superlative ashiest

1. Resembling ashes (especially in colour); (of a person’s complexion) unusually pale as a result of strong emotion, illness, etc.

   Beyond that black clot the sea lay, pale with last ashy gleam of day.

   1968, Ursula K. Le Guin, chapter 7, in A Wizard of Earthsea, page 123

   3 more examples

   Still is he sullein, still he lowres and frets, / Twixt crimson shame, and anger ashie pale,

   1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC

   Tell her that sicknesse, with her ashie hand, / Hath swept away the beauty from my cheekes,

   1634 (first performance), Thomas Heywood, Loves Maistresse: Or, The Queens Masque. […], London: […] Robert Raworth, for Iohn Crowch; and are to bee sold by Iasper Emery, […], published 1636, →OCLC, Act IIII

   Again the operation; again the narcotic; again some return of colour to the ashy cheeks, and the regular breathing of healthy sleep.

   1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 11, in Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library, →OCLC, chapter IX, page 126

   Synonyms: ashen, cineraceous, cinereous

2. Comprising, containing, or covered with ash.

   He lit the paper until it burned to an ashy film.

   1991, Edwidge Danticat, “A Wall of Fire Rising”, in Krik? Krak!, New York: Soho Press

   3 more examples

   Ye heauenly spirites, whose ashie cinders lie / Vnder deep ruines, with huge walls opprest,

   1591, Joachim du Bellay, “Ruines of Rome: By Bellay”, in Ed[mund] Sp[enser], transl., Complaints. Containing Sundrie Small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie. […], London: […] William Ponsonbie, […], →OCLC

   [W]here yet the Embers glow, / Wide o’er the Pyle the sable Wine they throw, / And deep subsides the ashy Heap below.

   1720, Homer, “Book XXIII”, in Alexander Pope, transl., The Iliad of Homer, volume VI, London: […] W[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintott […], →OCLC, page 75

   […] I saw her sitting on the hearth in a ragged chair, close before, and lost in the contemplation of, the ashy fire.

   1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter X, in Great Expectations […], volume III, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 151

   Synonyms: cinereous

3. African-American VernacularHaving dry or dead skin (therefore discolored).

   It was summer and his pants were short, so the pickle juice made clean streams down his ashy legs[…]

   1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 4, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Random House, →ISBN, page 22

   1 more example

   After passing it under her runny nose, a skinny chalk-colored girl raised a hand so disgustingly ashy, so white and dry-skinned, that it could only be black.

   2015, Paul Beatty, chapter 11, in The Sellout, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 159