paled

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of pale.

   The sky paled as dawn crept over the hills.

   Next to her sister's success, his own achievements paled.

   Note

   One spelling hides two unrelated verbs. Usually it is the past of turning pale: a face paled, the sky paled at dawn. It can also mean fading into unimportance, as in paled into insignificance, and it works transitively too (the dawn paled the moon). But pale can also mean to fence in with stakes, so they paled the orchard is about fencing, not fading. That second verb also gives the fenced-in adjective.

2. 2
   adjectiveobsolete

   Enclosed by a paling: a fence of upright pointed stakes set close together.

   Beyond the paled garden stretched the open common where the cattle grazed.

   The paled enclosure shielded the seedlings from the deer each spring.

   Note

   Land shut in by stakes, as in Spenser's "a paled greene" in The Faerie Queene (1590). It is the participle of the fencing verb described under the past-tense form, and it survives only through its relatives, the noun paling and the stake called a pale. The adjective itself is obsolete. Fenced or enclosed carries the meaning today without any confusion with color.

3. 3
   adjectiveobsolete

   Marked or decorated with stripes.

   Buskins he wore of costliest cordwayne, / Pinckt vpon gold, and paled part per part,

   1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

   Note

   Spenser's word for stripes, from The Faerie Queene (1596), where buskins of the costliest leather are "paled part per part," striped section by section. A modern reader will hear the color verb and picture faded boots, which is exactly the misreading to avoid. The adjective is obsolete. Gloss it when quoting, and write striped in your own prose.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3