Cadet grey (spelled gray in

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...

) is a somewhat blue-greyish shade of the colour

grey Grey (more frequent in British English) or gray (more frequent in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning that it has no chroma. It is the color of a cloud-covered s ...

. The first recorded use of ''cadet grey'' as a colour name in English 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 colour space cadet. ''Space cadet'' is one of the colours on the Resene Colour List, a colour list popular in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

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

Cadet blue

Displayed at right is the greyish

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB color model, RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB color model, RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between Violet (color), violet and cyan on the optical spe ...

web colour cadet blue. The first recorded use of ''cadet blue'' as a colour 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 originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

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

Cadet

Displayed at right is the colour cadet, a dark shade of cadet grey. The first recorded use of ''cadet'' as a colour 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 primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

, in particular, cadets at the

United States Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...

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 (state), New York, General George Washington stationed his headquarters in West Point in the summer and fall of 1779 durin ...

. Both armies in the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

initially included uniforms in the colour, including the 7th New York Militia, but it was primarily identified with those of the

Confederate States of America The Confederate States of America (CSA), also known as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or Dixieland, was an List of historical unrecognized states and dependencies, unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United State ...

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

Confederate States Army The Confederate States Army (CSA), also called the Confederate army or the Southern army, was the Military forces of the Confederate States, military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) duri ...

and have cadet grey uniforms. The lack of a formal uniform at the beginning of the war, with some Confederates wearing blue and some U.S.-allied state militias still wearing grey, caused significant confusion for both sides in the First Battle of Manassas. Cadet grey was previously chosen for the Army of the Republic of Texas in 1835 and 1840. Under the name "pike grey" (''Hechtgrau'') this colour distinguished the jäger regiments of the

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

n (and subsequently

Austro-Hungarian Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consist ...

) armies from the 18th century until 1915. In 1908 it was adopted as the universal colour of the new field service uniform for the army as a whole.

References