...
boy: Grandpa, why is this black currant red?
Grandpa: because it is... green
/In my language green is used not just to denote colour, but also to say that fruit is not ripe yet./
...And redcurrants, when they are green, are a yellowy sort of white;-)
b
PS re 'hoary': Robert Browning used 'hoary' in a way that I think the dictionaries cited so far haven't listed.
And though the fields are rough with hoary dew
All will be well when noon-tide wakes anew.
Dew cannot be old, but in early April - the first line of that poem is 'Oh to be in England, now that April's there' - it
can be frozen. This suggests that there
is some idea of greyness in it.
Of frost, it [hoar] is recorded in O.E., perhaps expressing the resemblance of the white feathers of frost to an old man's beard. Used as an attribute of boundary stones in Anglo-Saxon, perhaps in reference to being gray with lichens, hence its appearance in place-names.
Read more
here, which when it says 'P. Gmc. *haira (cf. O.N. harr "gray-haired, old" is getting a bit speculative. (The '*' means the word isn't attested in any document. In the age when Proto Germanic was spoken, the very notion of 'document' may have been unkown in
that part of the world.)
b