black and white
noun, adjective
Also a form of black-and-white
Forms black and whites black-and-white
- noun (US, slang, law enforcement) A police patrol car.
- noun (US, slang, by extension) The police, a police officer or the clothing they wear.
- noun A type of giant cookie (about eight inches in diameter) with icing on the top side: half white, half dark chocolate.
- noun A kind of ice cream soda with chocolate and vanilla flavors.
- noun (figurative) Day and night (two very different things).
- adjective (literal, strictly) Of art, a photograph or photography, using dots or lines that are either black or white (with no other values involved). “Using Adobe Photoshop, he opened the images that were grayscale and converted them to be black and white.”
- adjective (literal, loosely) Of art, a photograph or photography, using shades of grey rather than shades of any other color. “Their photos from that era are all black and white.”
- adjective Of a television or monitor, displaying images in shades of grey rather than color.
- adjective Classifying people, objects or concepts as two polar opposites, especially "right" and "wrong"; dichotomous and inflexible. “I wish she weren't always so black and white about every single thing.”
- adjective Easily divided into diametrically opposing categories.
Synonyms
police vehicle half-moon grayscale greyscale monochrome night-and-day written communication written language black-and-white
Etymology
The police car sense reflects a traditional livery scheme for such cars.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “black and white”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details