Preface To Grey/Gray: Does Gray Matter?

Does gray matter? Or is it grey matter?

The wikipedia spells it grey matter & points out, as people who have seen the movie Hannibal know, that "in living tissue, grey matter actually has a grey-brown color, which comes from capillary blood vessels & neuronal cell bodies." But "grey-brown matter" sounds a little like something that might be hurked up after a night of binge drinking, or something someone might find in one's trousers after they had sharted, usually during a night of binge drinking.

Of course, people have wondered what does grey matter taste like? As someone who doesn't eat any animal products, I can't even imagine, but many humans have eaten other animals' brains for millenia, & apparently you can even buy pork brains in milk gravy at the supermarket. Poor little pigs!

I don't know how old we've been using this term for the brain, but the Latin, substantia grisea, does indeed mean "grey substance," or, "grey matter" as a pretty good translation. No one online wants to tell me when the word came into English, & if it came as a translation of the Latin.

I thought grey matter mattered more than that!