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Pale vs Sickly - What's the difference?

pale | sickly |

In transitive terms the difference between pale and sickly

is that pale is to make pale; to diminish the brightness of while sickly is to make sickly.

As adjectives the difference between pale and sickly

is that pale is light in color while sickly is frequently ill; often in poor health; given to becoming ill.

As verbs the difference between pale and sickly

is that pale is to turn pale; to lose colour while sickly is to make sickly.

As a noun pale

is paleness; pallor.

As an adverb sickly is

in a sick manner.

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

    *

    sickly

    English

    Adjective

    (er)
  • Frequently ill; often in poor health; given to becoming ill.
  • a sickly child
  • Having the appearance of sickness or ill health; appearing ill, infirm or unhealthy; pale.
  • a sickly plant
  • * Dryden
  • The moon grows sickly at the sight of day.
  • Weak; faint; suggesting unhappiness.
  • a sickly smile
  • Somewhat sick; disposed to illness; attended with disease.
  • * Shakespeare
  • This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
  • Tending to produce disease.
  • a sickly''' autumn; a '''sickly climate
    (Cowper)
  • Tending to produce nausea; sickening.
  • a sickly''' smell; '''sickly sentimentality

    Verb

  • To make sickly.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
  • * 1840 , S. M. Heaton, George Heaton, Thoughts on the Litany, by a naval officer's orphan daughter (page 58)
  • * 1871 , Gail Hamilton, Country living and country thinking (page 109)
  • He evidently thinks the sweet little innocents never heard or thought of such a thing before, and would go on burying their curly heads in books, and sicklying their rosy faces with "the pale cast of thought" till the end of time

    Adverb

    (en adverb)
  • In a sick manner.
  • * 2010 , Rowan Somerville, The End of Sleep (page 66)
  • The creaseless horizontal face of the giant smiled sickly , leering.