pallid
/ˈpalɪd
/- Her mother was propped up against a pillow, her pallid face hardly standing out against the white background.
- Complacent smiles linger on their pallid faces.
- She glimpsed her mother lying feebly on a divan with a wrinkled, pallid face.
Synonyms
- It just sat there on the plate, stolid, pallid, and completely lacking in anything even approaching meal appeal.
- He mistakenly characterizes spirituality as a pallid Platonic flight from the world or some kind of interiorized religious stirrings.
- Character designs are rather pallid and dull, completely uninteresting in style or drawn without any particular flare.
Synonyms
Derivatives
pallidity
- Opposites cancel, the story falls flat, and pallidity ensues.
- Such preparations are of much value where a mild stimulant and astringent is required, and especially in catarrhal disorders of the mucous tissues, with marked pallidity and relaxation.
pallidly
/ adverb ...- Other moments refer - too vaguely and too pallidly - to problems that might be resolved in couples’ counseling.
- From a psychological perspective it's an acknowledged fact that vividly presented information is more likely to be retained and processed than pallidly presented information.
- A careful historian working on a broad canvass, Harris's hypotheses are cautiously, perhaps somewhat pallidly, framed.
pallidness
/ noun ...- Sam's face paled even more, his pallidness contrasting violently with his raven hair.
- The most common type of leprosy causes the pallidness of the skin which proves that people had to have melanin first in order for them to become leprous.
- The subject is the pallidness of life in those who never manage to engage in more than a shadowy existence on the fringe of active life.
Origin
Late 16th century: from Latin pallidus 'pale' (related to pallere 'be pale').
pale from Middle English:
The word for a ‘stake’ is from Old French pal, from Latin palus ‘stake’, which ultimately goes back to the same root found in page and pageant as well as paling (Late Middle English). The Pale was a name given to the part of Ireland under English jurisdiction before the 16th century. The earliest reference to the Pale in Ireland, from the modestly titled Introduction to Knowledge of 1547, stated that Ireland was divided into two parts, one being the English Pale and the other being ‘the wild Irish’. Many people believe that this enclosed English part of Ireland was the source of the expression beyond the pale but this is extremely unlikely, as the phrase is not recorded until the 18th century, and its origin remains something of a mystery. The Latin also gives us palisade (early 17th century), and impale (mid 16th century) first found in the sense ‘surround with a pale, fortify’, with ‘thrust a stake though’ recorded from the late 17th century. The adjective meaning ‘light’ comes via Old French pale from Latin pallidus, with the same meaning, and also the source of pallor (Late Middle English) and pallid (late 16th century), and has been in the language since the Middle Ages.