grey areagray arean.

1935 Foreign Affairs 13 704 A form of state lying somewhere in the grey area between socialism and communism.

1949 L. Markel Public Opinion & Foreign Policy x. 198 This operation, especially in the ‘gray areas’, can be extremely effective, and it is especially needed in areas in which private enterprise is barred.

1951 N.Y. Times 20 May 4/1 The Admiral outlined the United States program for the present period which he described as ‘the grey area’ between all-out war and peace.

1971 H. S. Kushner When Children ask about God v. 118 Young children have difficulty in comprehending the ‘gray area’ between truth and falsehood.

1985 Times 24 Apr. 19/2 They argue for just one single regulatory board..and the avoidance of grey areas.

1996 Outlook (New Delhi) 28 Aug. 20/1 In such cases, the President's permission becomes necessary for prosecution, although some legal eagles still consider it a grey area.

2000 ‘Dr. K.’ Compl. Hacker's Handbk. iv. 41 In some parts of the US, using war diallers is illegal, constituting nuisance calls, but in the UK the use of war diallers is a grey area.

1959 Public Adminstration Rev. 19 288/2 (advt.) This book..explores what lies behind the growing ‘grey areas’ and declining populations in the nation's older cities.

1963 Times 22 May 9/3 Within urban areas Mr. Wates said there were vast ‘grey’ areas—he mentioned Fulham, Battersea and Islington—which could not be classified as slums but were in need of rebuilding.

1986 Los Angeles Times (Nexis) 11 May i. 5 His ‘gray area’ residence, between slums and a wealthy neighborhood, is typical of the way Muppies [i.e. Mennonite urban professionals] justify their increasing wealth.

1999 A. O'Connor in E. C. Lagemann Philanthropic Found. viii. 169 In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Ford Foundation was the principal sponsor of a series of community-based experiments designed to combat..deteriorating conditions in the so-called ‘grey areas’ of U.S. central cities.

1978 Sunday Times (Johannesburg) 29 Oct. 16/4 The solutions offered are as diverse as the contributors, ranging from city states to ‘grey areas’ and NRP-type consociational democracy.

1985 South-Easter Aug. 5 Woodstock became a ‘grey area’, an apartheid misnomer for one of the few suburbs left in South Africa where history and variety have been left fairly intact.

1993 Geogr. Rev. 83 214 The government simply turns a blind eye to the darkening of gray areas in many large cities.

1999 Toronto Star (Nexis) 6 June The Group Areas Act which restricted people to neighbourhoods according to their colour, was unravelling, and she moved into Johannesburg's so-called gray area of Troyeville.