I also think (or at least it corresponds to my experience) that most people would probably describe a color like off-white gray or just gray as "absolute gray." [...] And technically speaking, gray (C0 M0 Y0 K50) is indeed an absolute gray, as it contains no "color tones" and 50% key (black). So exactly the midpoint of the possible printing between nothing and full.
More than most – namely all – people can perceive color. Even so-called red-green colorblind people have – just "calibrated differently" – rods for color vision, and none solely for brightness vision. The same applies to color monitors:
Personally, I find that (at least on my monitor at this time of day) the gray has a slightly yellowish (i.e., rather warm) tint.
Only a black-and-white monitor can theoretically* "send" pure gray; a color monitor has only Red (= inverse cyan), Green (= inverse magenta), and Blue (= inverse yellow) available. The calibration of these three monitor color elements also interacts with the color temperature of the current ambient light; depending on the location of the interference, a "cast" appears in one direction, another, or a third.
* with a black-and-white monitor, we would be at the next gaming level of the philosophical color purity dispute: which set of lux, lumens, and candela at which mains frequency would yield the one and only true white ;-)
But that would not be anthracite. And absolute anthracite probably doesn’t really exist.
Anthracite can certainly also be standardized as a Pantone color – its approximations in CMYK/RGB are a slightly less greenish than blueish dark gray, so from a "just" balanced gray (= dark gray) perspective, actually slightly turquoise-blue casted ;-)
(mind you, as a powder coating pigment I know it without such a cast).