palest

1. 1
   adjective

   Superlative of pale.

   The palest patch of sky appeared just above the horizon at dawn.

   Among all the samples, the palest fabric had faded most in the sun.

   Note

   A regular superlative: -est goes straight onto pale, and the final e is absorbed, giving pale, paler, palest. Before a color name it can drop the article and mean simply 'very pale' rather than 'the palest of all.' William Blair Morton Ferguson's Zollenstein (1908) describes 'a sky of palest Gobelin.' The same spelling is also the archaic thou-form of the verb, as in thou palest.

2. 2
   verbarchaic

   Second-person singular simple present indicative of pale. Archaic, used with thou.

   Note

   The old verb ending for thou survives here: Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) has a speech to Starbuck run 'thou reddenest and palest,' with the two color verbs paired as a face changes under anger. It carries the intransitive 'turn pale' meaning. Outside deliberately old-fashioned writing, the modern equivalent is simply you turn pale.

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