pale
adjectiveverbnounnounverbcommon in dialogue
- United States//peɪl//
Light in color.
adjective
- 1
Light in color.
I have pale yellow wallpaper.
She had pale skin because she didn't get much sunlight.
She turned pale and screamed on seeing the spider in the toilet.
“Heavens!” exclaimed Nina, “the blue-stocking and the fogy!—and yours are pale blue, Eileen!—you’re about as self-conscious as Drina—slumping there with your hair tumbling à la Mérode! Oh, it's very picturesque, of course, but a straight spine and good grooming is better.[…]”
- 2
Having a pallor (a light color, especially due to sickness, shock, fright etc.).
His face turned pale after hearing about his mother's death.
Mr. Campion appeared suitably impressed and she warmed to him. He was very easy to talk to with those long clown lines in his pale face, a natural goon, born rather too early she suspected.
- 3
Feeble, faint.
He is but a pale shadow of his former self.
The son's clumsy paintings are a pale imitation of his father's.
Many in the gay community were quick to assure everyone that gay marriage was not on the horizon. One community leader even tried to stop the introduction of a "domestic partnership" bill—at best a pale substitute for marriage—claiming that it would have polarized our opposition.
Etymology
Etymology tree Latin palleō Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-der. Proto-Italic *-iðos Latin -idus Latin pallidus Old French palebor. Middle English pale English pale From Middle English pale, from Old French pale, from Latin pallidus (“pale, pallid”), from palleō (“to be pale; to grow pale; to fade”), from Proto-Indo-European *pelito-, from *pelH- (“gray”). Doublet of pallid. Displaced native Old English blāc.
verb
- 1
To turn pale; to lose colour.
But a man— / Note men !—they are but women after all, / As women are but Auroras !—there are men / Born tender, apt to pale at a trodden worm, / Who paint for pastime, in their favourite dream, / Spruce auto-vestments flowered with crocus-flames / There are, too, who believe in hell and lie : […]
- 2
To become insignificant.
(Although the conditions are rather different, the generosity of the offer certainly pales by comparison with the "Eurailpass" now available to tourists from North and South America at $125 (£44 13s.), which allows two months' unlimited first class travel throughout the railway systems of thirteen countries—[...].)
Its financing pales next to the tens of billions that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will have at its disposal, especially with the coming infusion of some $3 billion a year from Warren E. Buffett, the founder of Berkshire Hathaway.
12 July 2012, Sam Adams, AV Club Ice Age: Continental Drift The matter of whether the world needs a fourth Ice Age movie pales beside the question of why there were three before it, but Continental Drift feels less like an extension of a theatrical franchise than an episode of a middling TV cartoon, lolling around on territory that’s already been settled.
- 3
To make pale; to diminish the brightness of.
The Glow-worme ſhowes the Matine to be neere, / And gins to pale his vneffectuall Fire : / Adue, adue, Hamlet : remember me.
noun
- 1
obsoletePaleness; pallor.
The boare (quoth ſhe) whereat a ſuddain pale, / Like lawne being ſpred vpon the bluſhing roſe, / Vſurpes her cheeke, ſhe trembles at his tale, / And on his neck her yoaking armes ſhe throwes.
noun
- 1
A wooden stake; a picket.
Ceiling joists were sometimes grooved to receive riven staves or pales that secured mud-and-straw walling.
Pales (irregular, hand-riven, 1′′ × 4′′ boards) are inserted into grooves on both sides of the floor joists; on top of these, similar pales are laid at right angles; finally a plasterlike mixture is poured over and around the top pales,
- 2
archaicA fence made from wooden stake; palisade.
How are we park’d and bounded in a pale, / A little herd of England’s timorous deer, / Mazed with a yelping kennel of French curs!
Fourthly, they ſhall not vpon any occaſion whatſoeuer breake downe any of our pales, or come into any of our Townes or forts by any other waies, iſſues or ports then ordinary […]
- 3
Limits, bounds (especially before of).
But let my due feet never fail, / To walk the ſtudious cloyſters pale, / And love the high embowed roof, / With antic pillars maſſy proof, / And ſtoried windows richly dight, / Caſting a dim religious light.
The moſſy pales that ſkirt the orchard-green, / Here hid by ſhrub-vvood, there by glimpſes ſeen; […]
Men so situated, beyond the pale of the honor and the law, are not to be trusted.
All things considered, we advise the male reader to keep his desires in check till he is at least twenty-five, and the female not to enter the pale of wedlock until she has attained the age of twenty.
- 4
A vertical band down the middle of a shield.
- 5
archaicA territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction. The parts of Ireland under English jurisdiction.
- 6
archaicA territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction. The territory around Calais under English control (from the 14th to 16th centuries).
He knows the fortifications – crumbling – and beyond the city walls the lands of the Pale, its woods, villages and marshes, its sluices, dykes and canals.
A low-lying, marshy enclave stretching eighteen miles along the coast and pushing some eight to ten miles inland, the Pale of Calais nestled between French Picardy to the west and, to the east, the imperial-dominated territories of Flanders.
- 7
archaicA territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction. A portion of Russia in which Jews were permitted to live (the Pale of Settlement).
- 8
archaicThe jurisdiction (territorial or otherwise) of an authority.
- 9
A cheese scoop.
Etymology
From Middle English pale, pal, borrowed from Old French pal, from Latin pālus (“stake, prop”). English inherited the word pole (or, rather Old English pāl) from a much older Proto-Germanic borrowing of the same Latin word. Doublet of peel and pole.
verb
- 1
To enclose with pales, or as if with pales; to encircle or encompass; to fence off.
[…] your iſle, which ſtands / As Neptunes Parke, ribb’d, and pal’d in / With Oakes vnſkaleable, and roaring Waters, / With Sands that will not bear your Enemies Boates, / But ſuck them vp to th’ Top-maſt.
Forms
- plural
- pales
- comparative
- paler
- superlative
- palest
- past tense
- paled
- past participle
- paled
- present participle
- paling
- third person singular
- pales