7/27/2023 0 Comments Beyond the pale“Nature is thus wise in our construction, that, when we would be blessed beyond the pale of reason, we are blessed imperfectly.” (From Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of the World, 1773.) “Acteon … suffer’d his Eye to rove at Pleasure, and beyond the Pale of Expedience.” (From Alexander Smith’s A Compleat History of Rogues, 1720.) For example, here are the OED’s three earliest citations: Originally the phrase was followed by “of” and it meant “outside or beyond the bounds of” something. “Beyond the pale” came first, as we said, dating from the early 18th century. Here’s where our two expressions come in. It could also mean “a district or territory within determined bounds, or subject to a particular jurisdiction.” It could be “an area enclosed by a fence,” or “any enclosed place,” to quote the OED. In the following century, “pale” acquired a couple of new meanings. In the late 14th century, “pale” was also used to mean the fence itself. Its original meaning, the OED says, was a stake or “a pointed piece of wood intended to be driven into the ground, esp. The noun “pale” was first recorded in writing in the mid-14th century. In post-classical Latin, palus also meant a palisade (originally a fence or enclosure made with wooden stakes), or a stripe (as in heraldry). When the noun “pale” was first recorded in the 1300s, it referred to a wooden stake meant to be driven into the ground.Īt that time, “pale” was a doublet-that is, an etymological twin-of the much earlier word “pole,” according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology.īoth “pale” and “pole” once had the same meaning and came from the same source, the Latin word palus.Īs the OED explains, in classical Latin a palus was a stake or a “wooden post used by Roman soldiers to represent an opponent during fighting practice.” We briefly discussed these expressions on our blog five years ago, but they’re worth another look. It was first recorded in 1720, while the first reference to the Pale of Settlement was recorded in 1890, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. “Beyond the pale” isn’t a reference to the other phrase, since it’s 170 years older. The other phrase you refer to, about the isolation of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, is the “Pale of Settlement.”īut the two expressions have little to do with one another, beyond their common use of the noun “pale” in the sense of a boundary or a limit. When asked about the meaning of “beyond the pail,” he joked, “Isn’t that where you go when you kick the bucket?”Īs for “beyond the pale,” it refers to something that’s improper or exceeds the limits of acceptability. The language writer Michael Quinion has a great quip about this on his website World Wide Words. However, many of the Google hits are from punsters or people pointing out the error. I’d always thought the phrase was “beyond the pale,” a reference to the Russian Jewish ghetto.Ī: You’re right that the correct phrase is “beyond the pale.” You’re also right that “beyond the pail” shows up a lot on the Internet. In fact, I googled the phrase and got many thousands of hits. Q: I’ve seen many examples of “beyond the pail” on the Internet.
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