I always understood monochrome to be black and white as opposed to colours.. but it seems we are both right :
Monochrome
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Something which is
monochromatic has a single
color. In
physics, the word is used more generally to refer to
electromagnetic radiation of a single
wavelength.
For an
image, the term
monochrome is essentially the same as
black-and-white, but
monochrome may be preferred to indicate that combinations such as green-and-white, green-and-black, etc., are not excluded.
In computing, monochrome has two meanings: it can mean having only one colour which is either on or off, or also allowing shades of that colour, although the latter is more correctly known as
greyscale. Thus it too has some ambiguity.
A monochrome
computer display is capable of displaying only a single color, often
green,
amber,
red or
white, and often also shades of that colour.
In the physical sense, no real source of electromagnetic radiation is purely monochromatic, since that would require a
wave of infinite duration. Even sources such as
lasers have some narrow range of wavelengths (known as the
linewidth or
bandwidth of the source) within which they operate.
The word monochromatic comes from the two
Greek words
mono (meaning "one"), and
chroma (χρωμα, meaning "surface" or "the colour of the skin").