Pale, n.
1. A pointed stake or slat, either driven into the ground, or fastened to a rail at the top and bottom, for fencing or inclosing; a picket.
Deer creep through when a pale tumbles down. --Mortimer.
2. That which incloses or fences in; a boundary; a limit; a fence; a palisade. “Within one pale or hedge.”
3. A space or field having bounds or limits; a limited region or place; an inclosure; -- often used figuratively. “To walk the studious cloister's pale.” --Milton. “Out of the pale of civilization.”
5. A stripe or band, as on a garment.
6. Her. One of the greater ordinaries, being a broad perpendicular stripe in an escutcheon, equally distant from the two edges, and occupying one third of it.
7. A cheese scoop.
8. Shipbuilding A shore for bracing a timber before it is fastened.
English pale, Irish pale Hist., the limits or territory in Eastern Ireland within which alone the English conquerors of Ireland held dominion for a long period after their invasion of the country by Henry II in 1172. See note, below.
beyond the pale outside the limits of what is allowed or proper; also, outside the limits within which one is protected.