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Pale vs Frail - What's the difference?

pale | frail |

As adjectives the difference between pale and frail

is that pale is light in color while frail is easily broken; mentally or physically fragile; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish; easily destroyed; not tenacious of life; weak; infirm.

As verbs the difference between pale and frail

is that pale is to turn pale; to lose colour while frail is to play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.

As nouns the difference between pale and frail

is that pale is paleness; pallor while frail is a basket made of rushes, used chiefly for containing figs and raisins.

pale

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl), from (etyl) pale, from (etyl) .

Adjective

(er)
  • Light in color.
  • :
  • *
  • *:“Heavens!” exclaimed Nina, “the blue-stocking and the fogy!—and yours are'' pale blue, Eileen!—you’re about as self-conscious as Drina—slumping there with your hair tumbling ''à la Mérode! Oh, it's very picturesque, of course, but a straight spine and good grooming is better.”
  • (lb) Having a pallor (a light color, especially due to sickness, shock, fright etc.).
  • :
  • *{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
  • , chapter=5 citation , passage=Mr. Campion appeared suitably impressed and she warmed to him. He was very easy to talk to with those long clown lines in his pale face, a natural goon, born rather too early she suspected.}}

    Verb

    (pal)
  • To turn pale; to lose colour.
  • * Elizabeth Browning
  • Apt to pale at a trodden worm.
  • To become insignificant.
  • 2006' New York Times ''Its financing '''pales next to the tens of billions that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will have at its disposal, ...
  • * 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 make pale; to diminish the brightness of.
  • * Shakespeare
  • The glowworm shows the matin to be near, / And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
    Derived terms
    * pale in comparison

    Noun

  • (obsolete) Paleness; pallor.
  • (Shakespeare)

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl), from (etyl) pal, from (etyl) .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A wooden stake; a picket.
  • * Mortimer
  • Deer creep through when a pale tumbles down.
  • (archaic) Fence made from wooden stake; palisade.
  • * 1615 , Ralph Hamor, A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia , Richmond 1957, p. 13:
  • 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 [...].
  • (by extension) Limits, bounds (especially before of).
  • * Milton
  • to walk the studious cloister's pale
  • * 1900 , :
  • Men so situated, beyond the pale of the honor and the law, are not to be trusted.
  • * 1919 , B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols, :
  • 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.
  • The bounds of morality, good behaviour or judgment in civilized company, in the phrase beyond the pale .
  • (heraldiccharge) A vertical band down the middle of a shield.
  • (archaic) A territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction.
  • # (historical) The parts of Ireland under English jurisdiction.
  • # (historical) The territory around (Calais) under English control (from the 14th to 16th centuries).
  • #* 2009 , (Hilary Mantel), Wolf Hall , Fourth Estate 2010, p. 402:
  • 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.
  • #* 2011 , Thomas Penn, Winter King , Penguin 2012, p. 73:
  • 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.
  • # (historical) A portion of Russia in which Jews were permitted to live.
  • (archaic) The jurisdiction (territorial or otherwise) of an authority.
  • A cheese scoop.
  • (Simmonds)
  • A shore for bracing a timber before it is fastened.
  • (Spencer)

    Verb

    (pal)
  • To enclose with pales, or as if with pales; to encircle or encompass; to fence off.
  • [Your isle, which stands] ribbed and paled in / With rocks unscalable and roaring waters. — Shakespeare.

    Statistics

    *

    frail

    English

    Adjective

    (er)
  • Easily broken; mentally or physically fragile; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish; easily destroyed; not tenacious of life; weak; infirm.
  • Liable to fall from virtue or be led into sin; not strong against temptation; weak in resolution; unchaste.
  • Noun

    (en noun)
  • A basket made of rushes, used chiefly for containing figs and raisins.
  • The quantity of raisins contained in a frail.
  • A rush for weaving baskets.
  • (dated, slang) A girl.
  • * 1931 , (Cab Calloway) / (Irving Mills), ‘Minnie the Moocher’:
  • She was the roughest, toughest frail , but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
  • * 1933 , , , edition 1, Book 2, Chapter XXII:
  • There were five people in the Quirinal bar after dinner, a high-class Italian frail who sat on a stool making persistent conversation against the bartender's bored: “Si ... Si ... Si,” a light, snobbish Egyptian who was lonely but chary of the woman, and the two Americans.
  • * 1939 , (Raymond Chandler), The Big Sleep , Penguin 2011, p. 148:
  • ‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail .’
  • * 1941 , Preston Sturges, '', published in ''Five Screenplays , ISBN 0-520-05442-4, page 77:
  • Sullivan, the girl and the butler get to the ground. The girl wears a turtle-neck sweater, a cap slightly sideways, a torn coat, turned-up pants and sneakers.
    SULLIVAN Why don't you go back with the car... You look about as much like a boy as .
    THE GIRL All right, they'll think I'm your frail .

    References

    *

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.
  • Anagrams

    *