pale

1. (intransitive) To turn pale; to lose colour.Examples: "But a man— / Note men !—they are but women after all, / As women are but Auroras !—there are men / Born tender, apt to pale at a trodden worm, / Who paint for pastime, in their favourite dream, / Spruce auto-vestments flowered with crocus-flames / There are, too, who believe in hell and lie : […]"intransitive

2. (intransitive) To become insignificant.Examples: "(Although the conditions are rather different, the generosity of the offer certainly pales by comparison with the "Eurailpass" now available to tourists from North and South America at $125 (£44 13s.), which allows two months' unlimited first class travel throughout the railway systems of thirteen countries—[...].)"; "Its financing pales next to the tens of billions that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will have at its disposal, especially with the coming infusion of some $3 billion a year from Warren E. Buffett, the founder of Berkshire Hathaway."; "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."intransitive

3. (transitive) To make pale; to diminish the brightness of.Examples: "The Glow-worme ſhowes the Matine to be neere, / And gins to pale his vneffectuall Fire : / Adue, adue, Hamlet : remember me."transitive

1. (obsolete) Paleness; pallor.Examples: "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."obsolete

1. (archaic) A fence made from wooden stake; palisade.Examples: "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 […]"archaic

2. (by extension) Limits, bounds (especially before of).Examples: "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; […]"; "Men so situated, beyond the pale of the honor and the law, are not to be trusted."broadly

3. (heraldry) A vertical band down the middle of a shield.Examples: "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."

4. (archaic) A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.archaichistorical

5. (archaic) A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.Examples: "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."archaichistorical

6. (archaic) A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.archaichistorical

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