pale

Meanings

Adjective

• Light in color.
• Having a pallor (a light color, especially due to sickness, shock, fright etc.).
• Feeble, faint.

Verb

• To turn pale; to lose colour.
• To become insignificant.
• To make pale; to diminish the brightness of.
• To enclose with pales, or as if with pales; to encircle or encompass; to fence off.

Noun

• Paleness; pallor.
• A wooden stake; a picket.
• Fence made from wooden stake; palisade.
• Limits, bounds (especially before of).
• The bounds of morality, good behaviour or judgment in civilized company, in the phrase beyond the pale.
• A vertical band down the middle of a shield.
• A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.
• The jurisdiction (territorial or otherwise) of an authority.
• A cheese scoop.

Origin

• From Middle English pale, from Old French pale, from Latin pallidus ("pale, pallid"). pallid.
• 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.
• peel, and pole.