Contrastive Analysis of English and Uzbek Idioms Containing the Lexeme "Grey"

This article focuses on examining English and Uzbek idioms that include the lexeme "grey" or "gray." To achieve this, various equivalents and meanings of the word "grey" were organized into associative chains and microsystems, highlighting similarities and differences between the two languages. The study involved an extensive review of English and Uzbek scientific literature and employed qualitative-quantitative, semantic, and cultural-linguistic analysis to explore the significance of the color grey. From an optical perspective, grey occupies a space between black and white. The article addresses the lexical and semantic polysemy of the term "grey," including its metaphorical use in expressions such as "grey zone," which refers to intermediate, ambiguous, or undefined concepts. This metaphor is widely applied in the 21st century across various fields such as technology, computer science, economics, trade, law, social work, medicine, morality, literature, and diplomacy. The findings of this research are valuable for educational and translation practices, the development of dictionaries, and establishing a foundation for automatic translation of idiomatic expressions. Additionally, the study contributes to fields such as intercultural communication, psycholinguistics, cultural studies, and cognitive and comparative linguistics.