"Black" is a noun, it is a colour. "Dark" is an adjective, it describes a colour. If a colour is "dark", it means there is more black mixed in with it. The same applies to "white" (noun/colour) and "light" (adjective). For example we have "blue" - to make "dark blue", we add black, to make "light blue" we add white.

Hi Hunter, The answer to this question is to think about 'shades' of colour and 'primary colours'. We normally say there are three primary colours. Red, green and blue. And every other colour is a mix of this. A shade. Take blue for example. If you look at the flag of Argentina it is blue and white. The shade of blue in the Argentinian flag is light blue. Compare it to the flag of Australia. This is also mostly blue. But it is a dark blue shade (or at least darker than the blue in the Argentinian flag). Scientists might argue that black isn't really a shade of anything, this is because they might say that colour is really about how much light is reflected, and black is the absence of light. 'Dark' is also the absence of light. But in normal everyday use, black is considered a colour. You can buy tins of black paint for example. So, can you have shades of black? Scientifically speaking you cannot, but in everyday English it is used this way. We use 'black' to mean night-time, when we really mean 'dark'...but then again how often is there really a complete absence of light at night? Phew...that was something that started off as a simple answer, and got more complicated as I went along. I hope it makes some sense :-)

Black is something specific. Black is black. There is only one black. There are no shades of black. There is one "black" crayon in the box of crayons. "Dark" is not a color name. Dark means "less bright" or "not bright." A room can be dark. In a classroom, if we are projecting something on a screen, we turn off the lights to darken the room. When the room is dark, we still see different colors. We can still see that Lucy is wearing a green shirt or that Sid is holding a red pencil. If we were going to paint a picture of a darkened classroom, we would use a dark green paint for Lucy's shirt and dark red paint for Sid's pencil. Thus, "dark" can mean "there isn't much light"--it's dark tonight because there's no moon. "Dark" can modify a color name, as can "light." "His pants were navy blue, in such a dark shade of blue that they almost looked black." End of answer, now I want to argue a point. I think black _is_ a color. Saying it isn't is the same kind of pedantry as insisting that starfish be called "sea stars." Colors are perceptions. "Red" isn't "light with 700 nm wavelength," red is "the perception that is usually evoked by light with 700 nm wavelength." Black is the color we perceive when there is almost no light coming into our eyes from an object. Here's the clincher. Right now, what color do you see behind your head? _It's not black._ We do not feel that we are living in a world with objects in front of us and deep black behind us. It's some kind of gap, a lacuna, some kind of _nothingness._ I do not see "black" behind me, I see "nothing" behind me. (An even better example, though many people aren't aware of it if they haven't taken a psychology course, is the blind spot in everybody's eye. It's quite a Zen question: what do we see in our blind spot? It certainly isn't black. And we don't "see nothing" either. We are _unaware of seeing nothing_.)

'Dark' is not a colour. Like 'light', it is a qualitative adjective. It can be used in combination with a colour, as in 'dark brown', but it is not a colour in itself. If you say that someone wears 'dark clothes', they might be black, or dark grey,or dark blue, or dark green ..... we don't know. Linguistically and artistically, black is a colour. Yes, I know that scientifically there's no such thing as 'black'. But when we say that a car is black, we know for sure that it is not grey or blue or any other colour. If something is 'black', we know that it is dark. Something that is 'dark' is not necessarily 'black'. I hope that makes sense.

Okay, Thanks Basil.