Pale vs Plain - What's the difference?
pale | plain |
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.).
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*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
, chapter=5 To turn pale; to lose colour.
* Elizabeth Browning
To become insignificant.
* 12 July 2012 , Sam Adams, AV Club Ice Age: Continental Drift
To make pale; to diminish the brightness of.
* Shakespeare
(obsolete) Paleness; pallor.
A wooden stake; a picket.
* Mortimer
(archaic) Fence made from wooden stake; palisade.
* 1615 , Ralph Hamor, A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia , Richmond 1957, p. 13:
(by extension) Limits, bounds (especially before of).
* Milton
* 1900 , :
* 1919 , B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols, :
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:
#* 2011 , Thomas Penn, Winter King , Penguin 2012, p. 73:
# (historical) A portion of Russia in which Jews were permitted to live.
(archaic) The jurisdiction (territorial or otherwise) of an authority.
A cheese scoop.
A shore for bracing a timber before it is fastened.
To enclose with pales, or as if with pales; to encircle or encompass; to fence off.
* Bible, (w) xl. 4
Simple.
# Ordinary; lacking adornment or ornamentation; unembellished.
#* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=September-October, author=(Henry Petroski)
, magazine=(American Scientist), title= # Of just one colour; lacking a pattern.
# Simple in habits or qualities; unsophisticated, not exceptional, ordinary.
#* (Henry Hammond) (1605-1660)
#* (Abraham Lincoln) (1809-1865)
# (label) Having only few ingredients, or no additional ingredients or seasonings; not elaborate, without toppings or extras.
# (label) Containing no extended or nonprinting characters (especially in plain text).
Obvious.
# Evident to one's senses or reason; manifest, clear, unmistakable.
#* 1843 , (Thomas Carlyle), '', book 2, ch. XV, ''Practical — Devotional
# Downright; total, unmistakable (as intensifier).
Open.
# Honest and without deception; candid, open; blunt.
#* (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
# Clear; unencumbered; equal; fair.
#* Felton
Not unusually beautiful; unattractive.
(colloquial) Simply
(rare, poetic) A lamentation.
* 1815 , Sir ,
To lament, bewail.
* Bishop Joseph Hall
* ,
An expanse of land with relatively low relief.
* Milton
* 1961 , J. A. Philip. Mimesis in the ''Sophistês'' of Plato . In: Proceedings and Transactions of the American Philological Association 92. p. 467.
A battlefield.
* Shakespeare
(obsolete) A .
(obsolete) To plane or level; to make plain or even on the surface.
* Wither
(obsolete) To make plain or manifest; to explain.
* Shakespeare
As nouns the difference between pale and plain
is that pale is while plain is (rare|poetic) a lamentation or plain can be an expanse of land with relatively low relief.As an adjective plain is
.As an adverb plain is
(colloquial) simply.As a verb plain is
to lament, bewail or plain can be (obsolete|transitive) to plane or level; to make plain or even on the surface.pale
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl), from (etyl) pale, from (etyl) .Adjective
(er)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)- Apt to pale at a trodden worm.
- 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, ...
- 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.
- The glowworm shows the matin to be near, / And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
Derived terms
* pale in comparisonNoun
- (Shakespeare)
Etymology 2
From (etyl), from (etyl) pal, from (etyl) .Noun
(en noun)- Deer creep through when a pale tumbles down.
- 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 [...].
- to walk the studious cloister's pale
- Men so situated, beyond the pale of the honor and the law, are not to be trusted.
- 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.
- 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.
- (Simmonds)
- (Spencer)
Verb
(pal)- [Your isle, which stands] ribbed and paled in / With rocks unscalable and roaring waters. — Shakespeare.
Statistics
*Anagrams
* English terms with multiple etymologies ----plain
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) pleyn, playn, (etyl) plain, plein, from (etyl) .Adjective
(er)- The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain .
The Evolution of Eyeglasses, passage=The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone, essentially what today we might term a frameless magnifying glass or plain glass paperweight.}}
- plain yet pious Christians
- the plain people
- In fact, by excommunication or persuasion, by impetuosity of driving or adroitness in leading, , it is now becoming plain everywhere, is a man that generally remains master at last.
- an honest mind, and plain
- Our troops beat an army in plain fight.
Synonyms
* no-frills * normal * ordinary * simple * unadorned * unseasoned * See alsoAntonyms
* bells and whistles * decorative * exotic * fancy * ornateDerived terms
* plain and simple * plain as a pikestaff * plain as the nose on one's face * plain chocolate * plain clothes * plain-dealing * plain film * plain flour * plain-hearted * plain Jane * plain-laid * plain line * plain paper * plain sailing * plain song/plainsong * plain-spoken * plain text * plain-vanilla * plain weave * plain-winged * plainly * plainnessAdverb
(-)- It was just plain stupid.
- I plain forgot.
Etymology 2
From (etyl) plainer, pleiner, variant of (etyl) and (etyl) pleindre, plaindre, from (etyl) plangere, present active infinitive of .Alternative forms
* pleinNoun
(en noun)The Lady of the Isles, Canto IV, part IX
- The warrior-threat, the infant's plain ,
- The mother's screams, were heard in vain;
Verb
(en verb)- to plain a loss
- Thy mother could thee for thy cradle set / Her husband's rusty iron corselet; / Whose jargling sound might rock her babe to rest, / That never plain' d of his uneasy nest.
More Poems, XXV, lines 5-9
- Then came I crying, and to-day,
- With heavier cause to plain ,
- Depart I into death away,
- Not to be born again.
Etymology 3
From (etyl) plain, from (etyl) .Noun
(wikipedia plain) (en noun)- Him the Ammonite / Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain .
- For Plato the life of the philosopher is a life of struggle towards the goal of knowledge, towards “searching the heavens and measuring the plains , in all places seeking the nature of everything as a whole”
- (Arbuthnot)
- Lead forth my soldiers to the plain .
Synonyms
* flatlands * high plain * plateau * prairie * steppeAntonyms
* cliff * gorge * mountain * valeDerived terms
* abyssal plain * alluvial plain * flood plain/floodplain * gibber plain * Great Plains * peneplain * Plains * plain wanderer * salt plain * the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plainSee also
* grassland * meadowVerb
(en verb)- We would rake Europe rather, plain the East.
- What's dumb in show, I'll plain in speech.