inky

ink +‎ -y

inky (comparative inkier, superlative inkiest)

1. Of the colour of ink, especially black ink; dark.
   • 1870, The Shamrock, volume 8, page 18:

     One black and gusty night, when the moon was down and the inky clouds swept fiercely overhead through the starless void; when the cruel wind raged and tore, and the sleety rain came swirlingly, drivingly down […]

   • 1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as chapter 6, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A. L. Burt Company, 1914 June, →OCLC:

     Tenderly she bore him back through the inky jungle to where the tribe lay, and for many days and nights she sat guard beside him, bringing him food and water, and brushing the flies and other insects from his cruel wounds.

2. Spattered or stained with ink.
3. (obsolete, literary) Dark-skinned; black.
   • 1877, Henry Kendall, “Ode to a Black Gin”, in The Australian Town and Country Journal, page 24:

     The gloved and jewelled bards who sing / Of Pippa, Maud, and Guinevere, / Have hardly done the 'handsome thing' / For you, my inky Cytherea.

• (dark-coloured): black, dark, inkish, murky
• (dark-skinned): black, dusky, inkish, sable, sooty, swarthy

• bright
• clear
• whitened

• India-inky

• inky-dinky