pale

adj

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.

1. Light in color.

   “I have pale yellow wallpaper.”

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

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.”

name

1. The part of Ireland directly under the control of the English government in the Late Middle Ages.

noun

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.

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.”

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

2. A 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; […]”

4. A vertical band down the middle of a shield.

   “The shield was silver, charged with a red cross voided (that is, with the centre cut out and only the edges left), between in chief (that is, above the horizontal limb of the cross) two black dragon's wings, and in base two red daggers, and in the centre of the cross a black winged helmet; on a red chief (a broad band across the top of the shield), a silver pale (a broad vertical band), and thereon eight black arrows crossed X-wise, four and four, and encircled with a black band, between on the dexter three bendlets (narrow bands slanting from dexter chief to sinister base) enhanced (that is, raised above the centre), and on the sinister a fleur-de-lis, all of gold.”

5. A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.
6. A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.

   “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. A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.
8. The jurisdiction (territorial or otherwise) of an authority.
9. A cheese scoop.

verb

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.

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.”