Gray/grey

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>On grey/gray, although I know the source of the orthographic
>difference, I've often idiosyncratically associated "grey" with a lighter
>tone and "gray" with a darker tone.

A correspondent on another list wrote on this topic (Jan. 2000):

 > Maybe it's just me, but the different spellings convey different
 > undertones to me: the "a" suggests expansive openness, the "e" suggests
 > something mean ...

My response:

<<And some of the OED correspondents felt that "gray" was darker than
"grey", while others felt that one was a "warmer" color with a little red
in it or something like that.
Connotations can be solipsistic and idiosyncratic (e.g., "gray"
theoretically might evoke antagonism or disgust in one who has encountered
a repulsive villain named Gray).
Denotations cannot be like this. If "grey eyes" are different from "gray
eyes" in any systematic and reproducible sense, then we have a problem with
British subjects being much less able to perceive the "gray"-ness than
Americans are!>>

An analogy:

With respect to a driver's document or medical credentials, one might
decide: "I will always use 'licence' to mean one issued by a nation,
'license' to mean one issued by a state of the US, and 'lisense' to refer
to one issued by a local authority." One could use this ridiculous
distinction faithfully throughout his life without any problem, and no one
would know that he had this policy. There might be a denotative distinction
in his personal diary, but the distinction would not be conveyed to anyone
else.

-- Doug Wilson