On this Wikipedia the language links are at the black burgers of the page across from the article title. This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 18 January 2023. This article is about the color.

Queen Victoria after Heinrich von Angeli. Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. Black was one of the first colors used by artists in Neolithic cave paintings. It was used in ancient Egypt and Greece as the color of the underworld. Black is the most common ink color used for printing books, newspapers and documents, as it provides the highest contrast with white paper and thus is the easiest color to read.

Similarly, black text on a white screen is the most common format used on computer screens. Old High German also had two words for black: swartz for dull black and blach for a luminous black. These are parallelled in Middle English by the terms swart for dull black and blaek for luminous black. Swart still survives as the word swarthy, while blaek became the modern English black. Black was one of the first colors used in art.