The 14 shades of gray

Good thing about being fond of people who are smarter than you: you get trivia feeds when you're with them. Proof that you can go gaga over him/her and not lose I.Q points.

Consider a typical conversation where you reach the word "gray".

Trivia injected: There are 14 shades of gray.

(At this time you have to thank God that you're not being asked how much you know about Khmer Rouge.)

Template Reaction: Oh really.?? If you come to think of it, a color can have infinite number of shades.

(With a trace amount of sarcasm, probably due to thinking, "How come I don't know that?")

Retort: No, I mean shades with a name. Like for red there's crimson, etc.

Feigning Intellectual Remark: Yeah, and there's vermilion for orange.

Attempt at Overthrow: Vermilion is a shade of red. Duh.

Impulse of Pride: No. It's a shade of orange. (To self: I know it, I know it.)

Challenge: It's a shade of red, even if you check it through internet right now.

Resolution: Vermilion, sometimes spelled vermillion, when found naturally occurring, is an opaque orangish red pigment, used since antiquity, originally derived from the powdered mineral cinnabar.

Whopee-doo. It's both a shade of orange and red. Safe. Win-win.

But I digress.

I looked for that 14 shades of gray. And what I found is a music anthology totally undiscovered by my ears: the music of Staind. This one here is So far Away from their album, 14 shades of gray. 

Unfortunately I found 26 shades of gray, excluding black and white.

Shades of gray
Gray	Arsenic	Ash gray	Battleship gray	Bistre	Black	Cadet gray	Charcoal	Cinereous	Cool gray
Davy's gray	Feldgrau	Glaucous	Isabelline	Liver	Payne's gray	Platinum	Seal brown	Silver	Slate gray
Taupe	Purple taupe	Medium taupe	Taupe gray	Pale taupe	Rose quartz	White	Xanadu
The samples shown above are only indicative.

But I enjoyed the 14 shades more.