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View synonyms for gray matter

gray matter

noun

  1. Anatomy. nerve tissue, especially of the brain and spinal cord, that contains fibers and nerve cell bodies and is dark reddish-gray. Compare white matter.
  2. Informal. brains or intellect.


gray matter

  1. The brownish-gray tissue of the vertebrate brain and spinal cord, made up chiefly of the cell bodies and dendrites of neurons.
  2. Compare white matter


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Word History and Origins

Origin of gray matter1

First recorded in 1830–40
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Idioms and Phrases

Brains, intellect, as in If you'd only use your gray matter, you'd see the answer in a minute . This expression refers to actual brain tissue that is gray in color. Agatha Christie's fictional detective, Hercule Poirot, constantly alludes to using the little gray cells for solving a crime. [Late 1800s]
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Compare Meanings

How does gray matter compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

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Example Sentences

He also worked on research in 2015 showing that people who are frequent lucid dreamers have more gray matter located in the frontal polar cortices.

My earliest memoryis throwing clumps of gray matter intothe Mediterranean then waiting forsomething solid to come back.

No issue on the mind would be complete without a chance to gaze upon the gray matter itself, and there are brains aplenty in our haunting photo essay documenting a library of malformed specimens.

The mother-daughter relationship may be especially influential, with a neuroimaging study from Yale University showing extra gray matter in the brains of moms who reported having warm relationships with their own mothers.

In these voids, MRI brain imaging shows a collaborative patchwork of gray matter called the default mode network takes control.

“In general, gray matter shrinkage may have no impact,” says Dr. Nicole Prause of University of California, Los Angeles.

Smaller volumes of gray matter may not themselves even be cause for concern.

The co-founders of Gray Matter, the pharmaceutical company he invented and was then elbowed out of.

The demented legislation that passed recently emerged from the mysterious gray matter of Mike Lee, the Utah senator.

That three-pound lump of gray matter contains 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses, or connections.

It is composed of a mass of gray matter surrounded by a covering of white matter.

If the ego be but the passing shadow of the material brain, at the disintegration of the gray matter what will become of us?

Acts principally by reducing excitability of gray matter of brain.

And that shows that you have more gray matter than some of your colleagues.

If I had any gray matter I could probably work out the facts.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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