# beyond the pale

Pronunciation: US say "bi-YAHND thuh PAYL" /biˌ(j)ɑnd ðə ˈpeɪl/; UK/AUS say "bi-YOND thuh PAYL" /bɪˌjɒnd ðə ˈpeɪl/

## Idiom

1. Of a person or their behavior: outside the limits of what is acceptable, or of accepted standards such as good judgment, morality, and ethics.
   - Simple: Describes a person or action that is too wrong or unwise to be accepted.
   - _Even his allies agreed that threatening a reporter's family was beyond the pale._
   - _After the scandal, donors who had once backed the senator considered him beyond the pale._
2. Outside the extent or limits of something, generally followed by of and the thing whose bounds are meant.
   - Simple: Outside the limits of something, usually followed by the word of.
   - _Refugees in the camp found themselves beyond the pale of any legal protection._
   - _For centuries, people who refused to conform were pushed beyond the pale of polite society._

## Origin

From beyond + the + pale (“wooden stake; fence of stakes; bounds, limits; territory within a boundary or jurisdiction”), suggesting that anything outside an authority’s jurisdiction is uncivilized. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there is insufficient evidence that the phrase originally referred to the English Pale in medieval Ireland or to the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire (1791–1917), where Jewish people were mostly made to live.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/beyond-the-pale (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).