LL-L "Etymology" 2010.08.04 (03) [EN]

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*L O W L A N D S - L - 04 August 2010 - Volume 03*

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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>

Subject: Etymology; beyond, beyond the pale



Dear all, This appeared in my mailbox this morning. It is a good thing; (yes
Martha)!

Warmest summer greetings.

Jacqueline BdJ   Seattle WA



*pale – podictionary 240* <http://podictionary.com/?p=243>

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 09:01 PM PDT

>From April 30, 2006…

I find in the Oxford English Dictionary that there are ten words pale
spelled *pale*.  None of them are a bucket, which would be spelled *pail*.

One at least is short for pale ale, so that’s okay, but I want to talk about
the one that’s behind the phrase “beyond the pale.”

Five of the ten are nouns so that “pale” a noun meaning a lack of pallor is
obviously only subtly different from “pale” the verb to lose ones pallor, or
“pale” the adjective.  But none of these are related to “beyond the pale”
which means something that is improper or as the OED defines it

“outside the limits of acceptable behavior”

Here’s the story: more than 2000 years ago Roman soldiers were like modern
soldiers in that they needed to train against enemies to prepare for war.
Before going into any battles at all they used to take a wooden stick and
plant it in the ground, standing up, and pretend it was the enemy they had
to fight.  This stick was called in Latin a *p?lus* and according to the
American Heritage Dictionary it comes from an Indo-European root meaning to
fasten.

A whole row of sticks stuck in the ground was a palisade and we still use
that word for the kind of rudimentary protective walls built around early
European settlements in North America.

But the word for a stick in the ground alone came to English through French
and appeared not as p?lus but as “pale” about 600 years ago.  Over time, and
perhaps even before, a pale was not just a stick, but a fence, and then it
was the area within the fence.

By about the time of Shakespeare’s birth, just over 400 years ago a pale was
an area which was under your control, and specifically the areas of Ireland
that were under English control were called the pale.

There were other areas of the world as well called the pale; the OED
mentions Calais in northern France.  So things that went on “beyond the
pale” were things out of control so that by 1658 it was being used
metaphorically to mean out of control and by implication unacceptable.

This word “pale” is also where we get our word “impale” that is, to poke a
stick through. For the sake of completeness, the word “pale” meaning the
color in our faces also comes from Latin through French, but it’s root is
instead pallidum.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: *Download
Now*<http://media.libsyn.com/media/podictionary/pale_podictionary_240.mp3>



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