Sekirov Dictionary

pale

/peɪl/

adjective 3
noun 11
verb 4
forms 7
phrases 3

adjective3

•
not bright or deep in color, and close to white
- I have pale yellow wallpaper.
- She had pale skin because she didn't get much sunlight.
•
Having a pallor (a light color, especially due to sickness, shock, fright etc.).
- His face turned pale after hearing about his mother's death.
•
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.

noun11

•
A wooden stake; a picket.
- Ceiling joists were sometimes grooved to receive riven staves or pales that secured mud-and-straw walling. — 1997
•
Limits, bounds (especially before of).
- The mossy pales that skirt the orchard-green, / Here hid by shrub-vvood, there by glimpses seen; […] — 1798
A vertical band down the middle of a shield.
A cheese scoop.
(historical) The parts of Ireland under English jurisdiction.
•
(historical) 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. — 2009
(historical) A portion of Russia in which Jews were permitted to live (the Pale of Settlement).
(no longer used) A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.
•
(no longer used) 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! — 1591
(no longer used) The jurisdiction (territorial or otherwise) of an authority.
•
(no longer used) Paleness; 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. — 1593

verb4

To turn pale; to lose colour.
•
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. — 1599
•
To become insignificant.
- 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.
To enclose with pales, or as if with pales; to encircle or encompass; to fence off.

forms

paled · paling · pales · paleth · palest · paler · palest

Phrases with pale

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