Cadet grey (sometimes spelled ''cadet gray'' in parts of the United States) is a somewhat

blue-grey Livid is a medium bluish-gray color. This color name comes from the Latin color term ''lividus'' meaning "'a dull leaden-blue color', and also used to describe the color of contused flesh, leading to the English expression 'black and blue'". ...

ish shade of the color

grey Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed ...

. The first recorded use of ''cadet grey'' as a color name in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

was in 1912. Before 1912, the word ''cadet grey'' was used as a name for a type of military issue uniform.

Variations

Space cadet

Displayed at right is the color space cadet. ''Space cadet'' is one of the colors on th
Resene Color List
a color list widely popular in Australia and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country ...

. The color "space cadet" was formulated in 2007.

Cadet blue

Displayed at right is the grayish

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when ...

web color Web colors are colors used in displaying web pages on the World Wide Web, and the methods for describing and specifying those colors. Colors may be specified as an RGB triplet or in hexadecimal format (a ''hex triplet'') or according to their c ...

cadet blue. The first recorded use of ''cadet blue'' as a color name in English was in 1892. In 1987, cadet blue was formulated as one of the

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

colors, which in the early 1990s became known as the X11 web colors.

Star command blue

Displayed at right is the color star command blue. This color was apparently formulated as an impression of the color that

commissioned officer An officer is a person who holds a position of authority as a member of an armed force or uniformed service. Broadly speaking, "officer" means a commissioned officer, a non-commissioned officer, or a warrant officer. However, absent contex ...

s in a fictional space navy would wear.

Cadet

Displayed at right is the color cadet, a dark shade of cadet grey. The first recorded use of ''cadet'' as a color name in English was in 1915.

Military use

The name ''cadet grey'' stems from its use in uniforms of the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...

, in particular, cadets at the United States Military Academy at

West Point, New York West Point is the oldest continuously occupied military post in the United States. Located on the Hudson River in New York, West Point was identified by General George Washington as the most important strategic position in America during the Amer ...

. Both armies in the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

initially included uniforms in the color, including the

7th New York Militia The 7th Regiment of the New York Militia, aka the "Silk Stocking" regiment, was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Also known as the "Blue-Bloods" due to the disproportionate number of its members who were part o ...

, but it was primarily identified with those of the

Confederate States of America The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States or the Confederacy was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confede ...

. By 1863, all troops were asked to obey the Regulations for the

Confederate States Army The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...

and have cadet grey uniforms. The lack of a formal uniforms at the beginning of the war, with some Confederates wearing blue and some Union-allied state militias still wearing gray, caused major confusion for both sides in the

First Battle of Manassas The First Battle of Bull Run (the name used by Union forces), also known as the Battle of First Manassas

. Cadet grey had previously been named the color chosen for the

Army of the Republic of Texas The Texas Army, officially the Army of the Republic of Texas, was the land warfare branch of the Texas Military Forces during the Republic of Texas. It descended from the Texian Army, which was established in October 1835 to fight for independe ...

in 1835 and 1840. Under the name "pike grey" (''Hechtgrau'') this color distinguished the jäger regiments of the

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populou ...

n (and subsequently

Austro-Hungarian Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

) armies from 1801 until 1915. In 1908 it was adopted as the universal color of the new field service uniform for the army as a whole.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cadet Grey Shades of gray