ash-coloured

It is an emblem of swiftness: when the brigand poet Shanfara boasts, “The ash-coloured Katas can drink only my leavings, after hastening all night to slake their thirst in the morning,” it is a hyperbole boasting of his speed.

The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

He had the same delicate pretty features, the same soft ash-coloured hair, the same little aquiline nose, the same pouting childish lips, and great greenish-grey languishing eyes, with soft eyelashes.

Dream tales and prose poems 2006

I might add that the OED does have cinereous, defined as 'Of an ashy hue, ash-coloured, ashen-gray'—but what color are these ashes?

languagehat.com: ASHES TO ASHES. 2004

The attendant gentlemen were well dressed, but wore “shocking bad hats;” and the king wore a sort of shooting suit, a short brown cut-away coat, an ash-coloured waistcoat and ash-coloured trousers with a blue stripe.

The Hawaiian Archipelago Isabella Lucy 2004

When, therefore, Shanfara boasts “The ash-coloured Katas can only drink my leavings, after hastening all night to slake their thirst in the morning,” it is a hyperbole to express exceeding swiftness.

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah 2003

Of tall, almost colossal stature, with dark, thin, ardent face, heavy overhanging brows, and an indescribably strange colour in his large eyes of unwonted fire, he differed sharply and strongly from all the ash-coloured denizens of the capital.

The Mysterious Portrait 2003

Retired officials remove thither to live; widows; people not very well off, who have acquaintances in the senate, and therefore condemn themselves to this for nearly the whole of their lives; and, in short, that whole list of people who can be described by the words ash-coloured — people whose garments, faces, hair, eyes, have a sort of ashy surface, like a day when there is in the sky neither cloud nor sun.

The Mysterious Portrait 2003

A bird, perched on an ash-coloured twig, sipped a beak full of cold water.

The Waves 2003

The wings of this bird are ash-coloured at first, but as it grows old the wings get black.

The History of Animals 2002

Of tall, almost colossal stature, with dark, thin, ardent face, heavy, overhanging brows, and an indescribably strange colour in his large eyes of unwonted fire, he differed sharply and strongly from all the ash-coloured denizens of the capital.

Taras Bulba and Other Tales 1952