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Pale   /peɪl/   Listen
adjective
Pale  adj.  (compar. paler; superl. palest)  
1.
Wanting in color; not ruddy; dusky white; pallid; wan; as, a pale face; a pale red; a pale blue. "Pale as a forpined ghost." "Speechless he stood and pale." "They are not of complexion red or pale."
2.
Not bright or brilliant; of a faint luster or hue; dim; as, the pale light of the moon. "The night, methinks, is but the daylight sick; It looks a little paler." Note: Pale is often used in the formation of self-explaining compounds; as, pale-colored, pale-eyed, pale-faced, pale-looking, etc.


noun
Pale  n.  Paleness; pallor. (R.)


Pale  n.  
1.
A pointed stake or slat, either driven into the ground, or fastened to a rail at the top and bottom, for fencing or inclosing; a picket. "Deer creep through when a pale tumbles down."
2.
That which incloses or fences in; a boundary; a limit; a fence; a palisade. "Within one pale or hedge."
3.
A space or field having bounds or limits; a limited region or place; an inclosure; often used figuratively. "To walk the studious cloister's pale." "Out of the pale of civilization."
4.
Hence: A region within specified bounds, whether or not enclosed or demarcated.
5.
A stripe or band, as on a garment.
6.
(Her.) One of the greater ordinaries, being a broad perpendicular stripe in an escutcheon, equally distant from the two edges, and occupying one third of it.
7.
A cheese scoop.
8.
(Shipbuilding) A shore for bracing a timber before it is fastened.
English pale, Irish pale (Hist.), the limits or territory in Eastern Ireland within which alone the English conquerors of Ireland held dominion for a long period after their invasion of the country by Henry II in 1172. See note, below.
beyond the pale outside the limits of what is allowed or proper; also, outside the limits within which one is protected. Note: The English Pale. That part of Ireland in which English law was acknowledged, and within which the dominion of the English was restricted, for some centuries after the conquests of Henry II. John distributed the part of Ireland then subject to England into 12 counties palatine, and this region became subsequently known as the Pale, but the limits varied at different times.


verb
Pale  v. t.  To make pale; to diminish the brightness of. "The glowworm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire."


Pale  v. t.  To inclose with pales, or as with pales; to encircle; to encompass; to fence off. "(Your isle, which stands) ribbed and paled in With rocks unscalable and roaring waters."


Pale  v. i.  (past & past part. paled; pres. part. paling)  To turn pale; to lose color or luster. "Apt to pale at a trodden worm."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Pale" Quotes from Famous Books



... Campanula is C. fragilis, of trailing habit. The starry pale blue flowers are seen to most advantage in hanging-baskets. The charm of these flowers is wholly lost if they are placed on a stage in the greenhouse; and they are not entirely satisfactory in a window where the light is transmitted through ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... river of mneme as a counterpart of the river lethe, my cup of coffee must have got its water from that stream of memory. If I could borrow that eloquence of Jouffroy which made his hearers turn pale, I might bring up before my readers a long array of pallid ghosts, whom these walls knew well in their earthly habiliments. Only a single one of those I met here still survives. The rest are mostly well-nigh forgotten by all but a few friends, or remembered chiefly in their children ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... history of Melrose and the popular tales connected with it. He pointed out many pieces of beautiful sculpture in obscure corners which would have escaped our notice. The Abbey has been built of a pale red stone; that part which was first erected of a very durable kind, the sculptured flowers and leaves and other minute ornaments being as perfect in many places as when first wrought. The ruin is of considerable extent, but unfortunately it ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... the sweetness of the female countenance. His delineation of the naked is excellent, as compared with the works of his predecessors, but far unequal to what he attained in his later years,—the drapery, on the contrary, is noble, majestic, and statuesque; the coloring is still pale and weak,—it was long ere he improved in this point; the landscape displays little or no amendment upon the Byzantine; the architecture, that of the fourteenth century, is to the figures that people it in the proportion of dolls' houses to the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... healthful, and hopeful, without deep sorrows or the stings of conscience, may do. In the strange freaks of a half-sleeping fancy, in his dreams, he remembered to have heard the screech of a wild animal, and to have seen the face of Julia Markham, pale with the mingled expression of courage ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle


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