pale
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: pāl
ipa: /peɪl/
rhymes: -eɪl
homophone: pail
Forms: form: pales
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.
Senses: examples: text: 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.
text: Ceiling joists were sometimes grooved to receive riven staves or pales that secured mud-and-straw walling.
ref: 1997, Gabrielle M. Lanier, Bernard L. Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic, page 90:
text: Pales (irregular, hand-riven, 1′′ × 4′′ boards) are inserted into grooves on both sides of the floor joists; on top of these, similar pales are laid at right angles; finally a plasterlike mixture is poured over and around the top pales,
ref: 2015, Mark E. Reinberger, Elizabeth McLean, The Philadelphia Country House:
glosses: A wooden stake; a picket.
examples: text: 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!
ref: 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:
text: 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 […]
ref: 1615, Ralph Hamor, A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia, London: William Welby, page 13:
glosses: A fence made from wooden stake; palisade.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1645, John Milton, Il Penseroso, in The Poetical Works of Milton, volume II, Edinburgh: Sands, Murray, and Cochran, published 1755, p. 151, lines 155–160
text: The moſſy pales that ſkirt the orchard-green, / Here hid by ſhrub-vvood, there by glimpſes ſeen; […]
ref: 1798, [Samuel Rogers], “An Epistle to a Friend”, in An Epistle to a Friend, with Other Poems. […], London: […] R. Noble, for T[homas] Cadell, Junior, and W[illiam] Davies, […], →OCLC, page 10, lines 19–20:
text: Men so situated, beyond the pale of the honor and the law, are not to be trusted.
ref: 1900, Jack London, The Son of the Wolf:The Wisdom of the Trail:
text: All things considered, we advise the male reader to keep his desires in check till he is at least twenty-five, and the female not to enter the pale of wedlock until she has attained the age of twenty.
ref: 1919, B. G. Jefferis, J. L. Nichols, Searchlights on Health:When and Whom to Marry:
glosses: Limits, bounds (especially before of).
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1956 July, Col. H. C. B. Rogers, “Railway Heraldry”, in Railway Magazine, page 479:
topics: government
heraldry
hobbies
lifestyle
monarchy
nobility
politics
hypernyms: ordinary
coordinate_terms: pallet
endorse
cottise
glosses: A vertical band down the middle of a shield.
glosses: A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.
The parts of Ireland under English jurisdiction.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, Fourth Estate, published 2010, page 402:
text: 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.
ref: 2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin, published 2012, page 73:
glosses: A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.
The territory around Calais under English control (from the 14th to 16th centuries).
glosses: A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.
A portion of Russia in which Jews were permitted to live (the Pale of Settlement).
glosses: The jurisdiction (territorial or otherwise) of an authority.
glosses: A cheese scoop.
Derived terms: beyond the pale
go beyond the pale
Pale of Settlement
within the pale