Talk:beyond the pale

Actually, the term comes from the Latin word palus meaning a stake or a pole. This is also the root of our word palisade, which is a fence made of such stakes surrounding an enclosed area. "Beyond the pale" means outside of our community, outside of our establishment, outside in the wild. See also http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pal2.htm

Removed all of the following,

"The term beyond the pale has been used for the fence to keep the East European Jews out of Europe. And for the fence to keep the Irish out of Northern Ireland. My parents left Bialystok on the Russian - Polish border around 1900 to avoid being beaten to death by Russians. My wife's family left parts of Ireland a bit earlier to avoid being beaten and starved by the British."

Not sure what this person is smoking, but can I get some. There is no fence around Northern Ireland, and the term precedes the creation of NI (1922) by a few hundred years. How can you 'keep the Irish out', they are one third of the population. I don't think the term was ever used to define an actual physical fence, and any area called the pale was poorly defined. --Dmol 00:03, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
 * One third? The Irish are almost 100% of the population of Northern Ireland. Protestants and Unionists are Irish too. Also, there was no fence "to keep the East European Jews out of Europe". The pale of settlement was the area of the Russian Empire where Jews were allowed to live, but there was no fence keeping them out of the rest of the Empire, or out of other countries.

Sarah Palin?
Who edited this page and used a SARAH PALIN quote as an example? Deleting - she's irrelevant.


 * More to the point, the citation was just a website, not something "durable" by Wiktionary standards. - -sche (discuss) 19:30, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

The term, "Beyond the Pale"
My mother’s family came from Ireland several generations ago. When I was much younger I was told: The cities and towns were controlled by the English and had the old oil or gas street lights which gave off a limited pale light. Anyone going beyond the pale was leaving the English controlled areas, something the English dared not do.

more on the Pale in Irish history
https://books.google.com/books?id=SStBAAAAcAAJ&dq=ireland%20%22the%20pale%22&pg=RA1-PA280#v=onepage&q=ireland%20%22the%20pale%22&f=false Kendaniszewski (talk) 16:22, 26 March 2019 (UTC)