Word Direct Answers

What does "pale" mean?

Pale: 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. Shak. Note: Pale is often used in the formation of self-explaining compounds; as, pale-colored, pale-eyed, pale-faced, pale-looking, etc.

Additional senses

  1. 2.Paleness; pallor. [R.] Shak.
  2. 3.To turn pale; to lose color or luster. Whittier. Apt to pale at a trodden worm. Mrs. Browning.
  3. 4.To make pale; to diminish the brightness of. The glowpale his uneffectual fire. Shak.
  4. 5.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. Mortimer.
  5. 6.That which incloses or fences in; a boundary; a limit; a fence; a palisade. "Within one pale or hedge." Robynson (More's Utopia).
  6. 7.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." Milton. "Out of the pale of civilization." Macaulay.
  7. 8.A stripe or band, as on a garment. Chaucer.
  8. 9.(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.
  9. 10.A cheese scoop. Simmonds.
  10. 11.(Shipbuilding) A shore for bracing a timber before it is fastened. English pale (Hist.), the limits or territory within which alone the English conquerors of Ireland held dominion for a long period after their invasion of the country in 1172. Spencer.
  11. 12.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. Shak.

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