pale

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: pāl, IPA^(key): /peɪl/, [pʰeɪ̯ɫ], [pʰeəɫ]

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪl
• Homophone: pail

From Middle English pale, from Old French pale, from Latin pallidus (“pale, pallid”), from palleō (“I am pale; I grow pale; I fade”), from Proto-Indo-European *pelito-, from *pelH- (“gray”). Doublet of pallid. Displaced native Old English blāc.

pale (comparative paler, superlative palest)

1. Light in color.

   I have pale yellow wallpaper.

   She had pale skin because she didn't get much sunlight.

   • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter IX, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

     “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. (of human skin) Having a pallor (a light color, especially due to sickness, shock, fright etc.).

   His face turned pale after hearing about his mother's death.

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 5, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:

     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.

• (human skin): See also Thesaurus:pallid

pale (third-person singular simple present pales, present participle paling, simple past and past participle paled)

1. (intransitive) To turn pale; to lose colour.
   • 1856, Elizabeth Browning, Aurora Leigh, New York: C. S. Francis & Co., published 1857, page 282:

     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. (intransitive) To become insignificant.
   • 1959 May, “Talking of Trains: "Rail-rovers" again”, in Trains Illustrated, page 236:

     (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—[...].)

   • 2006 September 14, Katie Hafner, “Philanthropy Google’s Way: Not the Usual”, in The New York Times‎:

     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. (transitive) To make pale; to diminish the brightness of.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene v], page 258, column 1, lines 89–91:

     The Glow-worme ſhowes the Matine to be neere, / And gins to pale his vneffectuall Fire : / Adue, adue, Hamlet : remember me.

• pale in comparison

pale

1. (obsolete) Paleness; pallor.
   • 1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC; Shakespeare’s Venus & Adonis: […], 4th edition, London: J[oseph] M[alaby] Dent and Co. […], 1896, →OCLC, lines 589–592:

     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.

     The spelling has been modernized.

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.

pale (plural pales)

1. A wooden stake; a picket.
   • 1707, John Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry, London: H. Mortlock & J. Robinson, 2nd edition, 1708, Chapter 1, pp. 11-12,

     […] if you deſign it a Fence to keep in Deer, at every eight or ten Foot diſtance, ſet a Poſt with a Mortice in it to ſtand a little ſloping over the ſide of the Bank about two Foot high; and into the Mortices put a Rail […] and no Deer will go over it, nor can they creep through it, as they do often, when a Pale tumbles down.

   • 1997, Gabrielle M. Lanier, Bernard L. Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic, page 90:

     Ceiling joists were sometimes grooved to receive riven staves or pales that secured mud-and-straw walling.

   • 2015, Mark E. Reinberger, Elizabeth McLean, The Philadelphia Country House:

     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. (archaic) Fence made from wooden stake; palisade.
   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals), page 2:

     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!

   • 1615, Ralph Hamor, A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia‎, London: William Welby, page 13:

     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. (by extension) Limits, bounds (especially before of).
   • 1645, John Milton, Il Penseroso, in The Poetical Works of Milton, volume II, Edinburgh: Sands, Murray, and Cochran, published 1755, p. 151, lines 155–160:

     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.

   • 1900, Jack London, The Son of the Wolf:The Wisdom of the Trail:

     Men so situated, beyond the pale of the honor and the law, are not to be trusted.

   • 1919, B. G. Jefferis, J. L. Nichols, Searchlights on Health:When and Whom to Marry:

     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. (heraldry) A vertical band down the middle of a shield.

   Coordinate terms: pallet, endorse, cottise

5. (archaic) A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.
   1. (historical) The parts of Ireland under English jurisdiction.
   2. (historical) The territory around Calais under English control (from the 14th to 16th centuries).
      • 2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, Fourth Estate, published 2010, page 402:

        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.

      • 2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin, published 2012, page 73:

        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.

   3. (historical) A portion of Russia in which Jews were permitted to live (the Pale of Settlement).
6. (archaic) The jurisdiction (territorial or otherwise) of an authority.
7. A cheese scoop.[1]

• beyond the pale
• Pale of Settlement
• within the pale

pale (third-person singular simple present pales, present participle paling, simple past and past participle paled)

1. To enclose with pales, or as if with pales; to encircle or encompass; to fence off.
   • 1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:

     […] 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.

• impale
• palisade
• pallescent

• Alep, LEAP, Lape, Leap, Peal, e-pal, leap, peal, pela, plea

pale

1. plural of paal

From Proto-Finnic *palgëh.

pale (genitive pale, partitive palge or pale)

1. cheek

Borrowed from Occitan pala (or some western Oïl language), from Latin pāla (“shovel, spade”). Doublet of pelle.

• IPA^(key): /pal/

• Audio

  (file)

• Homophone: pâle (chiefly France)

pale f (plural pales)

1. blade (of a propeller etc)
2. vane (of a windmill etc)

• “pale”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• Alep, lape, lapé, pela

From French parler (“talk, speak”).

• IPA^(key): /pa.le/

pale

1. to talk, to speak
   • 2019 March 19, “Rankont ann Itali ant Anvwaye Espesyal Etazini ak Larisi sou Kriz Venezuela a”, in Lavwadlamerik‎:

     Anvwaye espesyal Etazini pou Venezuela, Elliot Abrams, ak vis-minis afè etranjè Larisi, Sergei Ryabkov, ap fè reyinyon nan vil Wòm ann Itali pou yo pale sou “sityasyon Venezuela kap agrave.”

     American Special Envoy for Venezuela Elliot Abrams and Russian Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov are meeting in the city of Rome, Italy to talk about "the worsening situation in Venezuela."

• IPA^(key): /ˈpa.le/, [ˈpɐ.le]

pale

1. to ward off
2. to protect

• palekana
• pāpale

From Proto-Finnic *palgëh. Cognates include Finnish palje and Estonian pale.

• (Ala-Laukaa) IPA^(key): /ˈpɑle/, [ˈpɑɫe̞]
• (Soikkola) IPA^(key): /ˈpɑle/, [ˈpɑɫe̞]
• Rhymes: -ɑle
• Hyphenation: pa‧le

pale

1. padding at the bottom of a horse's stirrup

• Ruben E. Nirvi (1971) Inkeroismurteiden Sanakirja, Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura, page 378

pale f

1. plural of pala

• alpe, pela

Borrowed from Spanish padre (“father”).

pale

1. priest

• Church, Clarence, Church, Katherine (1955) Vocabulario castellano-jacalteco, jacalteco-castellano‎ (in Spanish), Guatemala C. A.: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, page 17; 39

Borrowed from Ancient Greek πάλη (pálē).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈpa.leː/, [ˈpäɫ̪eː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈpa.le/, [ˈpäːle]

palē f (genitive palēs); first declension

1. a wrestling

First-declension noun (Greek-type).

pāle

1. vocative singular of pālus

• “pale”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• pale in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “pale”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “pale”, in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly

pale

1. (anatomy) hand

• IPA^(key): /ˈpalɛ/, [ˈpalə]

pale

1. third-person plural present of paliś

From Old French pale, from Latin pallidus (“pale, pallid”).

pale m or f

1. (Jersey) pale

• bliême

• IPA^(key): /pɑːˈlɛ/

pale ?

1. worker

pale n (definite singular paleet, indefinite plural pale or paleer, definite plural palea or paleene)

1. alternative spelling of palé

pale n (definite singular paleet, indefinite plural pale, definite plural palea)

1. alternative spelling of palé

• pasle
• paule

From Latin pallidus.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpa.lə/

pale m (oblique and nominative feminine singular pale)

1. pale, whitish or having little color

• English: pale
• French: pâle
• Norman: pale (Jersey)

• IPA^(key): /ˈpa.lɛ/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -alɛ
• Syllabification: pa‧le
• Homophone: palę

pale m

1. nominative/accusative/vocative plural of pal

pale m

1. locative/vocative singular of pał

pale f

1. dative/locative singular of pała

• pale in Polish dictionaries at PWN

pale (Cyrillic spelling пале)

1. third-person plural present of paliti

pale (Cyrillic spelling пале)

1. feminine plural active past participle of pȁsti

• Audio (Kenya)

  (file)

pale

1. Pa class inflected form of -le.