cinerous

I was struck by the word cinerous: it clearly had something to do with ashes Latin cinis, root ciner-, but what exactly did it mean?

languagehat.com: ASHES TO ASHES. 2004

I wish a happy holiday to those of my readers who celebrate it, and may the cinerous blur and smudge in which we live spare all of us any unnecessary grief.

languagehat.com: ASHES TO ASHES. 2004

And to make matters worse, Aegypius monachus is known in English as both cinereous vulture and cinerous vulture.

languagehat.com: ASHES TO ASHES. 2004

Seen in mass, and at a distance, the woodlands are a soft cinerous purple.

Some Spring Days in Iowa Frederick John Lazell 1905

The neatly plaited folds of the leaves of the oak display a greenish or cinerous purple, a soft and delicate presentment of the stronger colors which come in October, just as the overture gives us faint voicings of the beauty which the opera is to bring; just as Lowell's organist gives us

Some Spring Days in Iowa Frederick John Lazell 1905

-- Body fusiform, as in the last, but with smaller pectoral and dorsal but larger caudal fin; the back is straighter and not so much rounded on the shoulders, and the colour is bluish-cinerous or slaty, freckled with small irregular spots of brown or plumbeous, and longitudinal streaks of the same flecked with white; the under parts a shade lighter than rest of the body.

Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon Robert Armitage Sterndale 1870

Himalayan crane, pink-headed duck, Jerdon's courser, great Indian bustard, long billed vulture and cinerous vulture are endangered.

The Times of India 2010