ashy

From Middle English asshy, asky, equivalent to ash +‎ -y.

• IPA^(key): /ˈæʃi/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æʃi

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.

   Synonyms: ashen, cineraceous, cinereous

   • 1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC; Shakespeare’s Venus & Adonis: […]‎, 4th edition, London: J[oseph] M[alaby] Dent and Co. […], 1896, →OCLC:

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

     The spelling has been modernized.

   • 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:

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

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

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

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

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

2. Comprising, containing, or covered with ash.

   Synonym: cinereous

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

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

   • 1715–1720, Homer, [Alexander] Pope, transl., “Book 23”, in The Iliad of Homer, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] W[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintott […], →OCLC, page 75:

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

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

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

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

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

3. (African-American Vernacular) Having dry or dead skin (therefore discolored).
   • 1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 4, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Random House, →ISBN, page 22:

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

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

     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.

• Hays, SYHA, Shay, hays, shay, yahs