Verge vs Pale - What's the difference?
verge | pale | Related terms |
A rod or staff of office, e.g. of a verger.
# The stick or wand with which persons were formerly admitted tenants, by holding it in the hand and swearing fealty to the lord. Such tenants were called tenants by the verge .
An edge or border.
*(John Milton) (1608-1674)
*:Even though we go to the extreme verge of possibility to invent a supposition favourable to it, the theoryimplies an absurdity.
*(Matthew Arnold) (1822-1888)
*:But on the horizon's verge descried, / Hangs, touched with light, one snowy sail.
*
*:It was not far from the house; but the ground sank into a depression there, and the ridge of it behind shut out everything except just the roof of the tallest hayrick. As one sat on the sward behind the elm, with the back turned on the rick and nothing in front but the tall elms and the oaks in the other hedge, it was quite easy to fancy it the verge of the prairie with the backwoods close by.
# The grassy area between the sidewalk and the street; a tree lawn.
#(lb) An extreme limit beyond which something specific will happen.
#:
(lb) The phallus.
#(lb) The external male organ of certain mollusks, worms, etc.
An old measure of land: a virgate or yardland.
A circumference; a circle; a ring.
*(William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
*:The inclusive verge / Of golden metal that must round my brow.
(lb) The shaft of a column, or a small ornamental shaft.
:
(lb) The edge of the tiling projecting over the gable of a roof.
:
(lb) The spindle of a watch balance, especially one with pallets, as in the old vertical escapement.
To be or come very close; to border; to approach.
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 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.
Verge is a related term of pale.
As a verb verge
is .As an adjective verge
is ribbed, veined.As a noun pale is
.verge
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) , of unknown origin. Earliest attested sense in English is now-obsolete meaning "male member, penis" (c.1400). Modern sense is from the notion of 'within the verge' (1509, also as (etyl) dedeinz la verge ), i.e. "subject to the Lord High Steward's authority" (as symbolized by the rod of office), originally a 12-mile radius round the royal court, which sense shifted to "the outermost edge of an expanse or area."Noun
(en noun)Synonyms
* (strip of land between street and sidewalk) see list at (m)Etymology 2
From (etyl) (compare versus); strongly influenced by the above noun.Verb
(verg)- Eating blowfish verges on insanity.
References
* ----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.