• synae[he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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    9 days ago

    I think of grey as having a slight blue tinge, like grey skies

    Versus gray is made of only (e.g.) black and white paint.

    But I know there’s no reason for that distinction and ultimately they’re interchangeable.

    Mostly I’m just curious how I got this idea of a slightly bluer grey and if anyone else has a similar mental association.

    • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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      9 days ago

      Interesting! There is a linguistic phenomenon that synonyms differentiate their meanings because we tend to assume that different words have different meanings. This happens both on the individual and collective level. Funny that it even works for different spellings in your case! Maybe you encountered the one in a specific context and since than associate it

    • Reyali@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      I prefer spelling it with an ‘e’ so I always do that (probably because my name has two common spellings, one with an A and the other with an E, and mine is the latter).

      But if forced to identify which is which color-wise, I’d say “grey” has cool undertones while “gray” has warm undertones. Really no reason to think that, but it’s right in my brain.

    • greenhorn@lemm.ee
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      8 days ago

      For me it’s always been Grey: cool (blue/black tones) Gray: warm (brown/orange tones)

    • Krudler@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Felt this way my whole life about low-saturation blues and also gre/ay… discovered I have something going on in my left eye that doesn’t really see greens all that well. Found this out over a rollicking argument over my favorite gray coat which obv, was actually kinda greenish