gray area

Idioms  

1. Indeterminate territory, undefined position, neither here nor there. For example, There's a large gray area between what is legal and what is not. This term, which uses gray in the sense of “neither black nor white” (or halfway between the two), dates only from the mid-1900s.

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Example Sentences

At the same time, it recently announced a systems upgrade that is likely to curtail the technique, which other market participants see as falling into a regulatory gray area.

From The Wall Street Journal

And as “After the Hunt” assesses the futility of so-called cancel culture, the film carefully avoids assigning guilt, reminding the viewer that there is still plenty of gray area between good and bad.

From Salon

Regulatory uncertainty: Several of these networks operate in regulatory gray areas.

From MarketWatch

Although it’s a gray area that not every producer would feel comfortable treading, Bauld said, the people with whom Maris works trust her instincts.

From Los Angeles Times

“There is a bit of a gray area, but I would suspect that a lot of people who got caught up in this feel like they didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

From The Wall Street Journal