pale (2) — OET

pale2

adjective

1 his pale skin | she looked pale and drawn:

white, pallid, pasty, pasty-faced, wan, colourless, anaemic, bloodless, washed out, peaky, peakish, ashen, ashen-faced, ashy, chalky, chalk white, grey, whitish, white-faced, whey-faced, waxen, waxy, blanched, drained, pinched, green, ghastly, sickly, sallow, as white as a sheet, as white as a ghost, deathly pale, cadaverous, corpse-like, looking as if one had seen a ghost;

milky, creamy, cream, ivory, milk white, alabaster;

fair, light-skinned, fair-skinned;

informal like death warmed up;

Scottish, informal peely-wally;

rare etiolated, lymphatic.

▷antonyms flushed, rosy.

2 pale colours:

light, light-coloured, pastel, neutral, light-toned, muted, subtle, soft, low-key, restrained;

faded, bleached, dusty, whitish, washed out, insipid.

3 the pale light of morning:

dim, faint, weak, feeble, thin, watery, wan.

▷antonyms dark; bright.

4 a pale imitation of the real thing:

inferior, poor, feeble, weak, insipid, wishy-washy, vapid, bland, puny, flat, inadequate, ineffectual, ineffective, half-hearted;

tame, uninspired, unimaginative, lacklustre, spiritless, lifeless, anaemic, bloodless;

informal pathetic;

rare etiolated.

verb

1 his face paled:

go/turn white, grow/turn/become pale, blanch, blench, lose colour;

whiten, lighten.

2 everything else pales by comparison:

decrease in importance, lose significance, pale into insignificance;

fade, dwindle, diminish, lessen, dim, lose lustre.

pale (1) Oxford Dictionary of English