beyond the pale

Unacceptable, outside the rules of society, morality, etc. The noun “pale,” from the Latin palum, meant a stake of the kind used to make fences, or a fence made of such stakes. By extension it came to mean the limits designated by a fence, at first literally and then figuratively. In the fourteenth century the English Pale was a name given to the part of Ireland then under English rule and therefore within the bounds of civilization (as perceived by the English). There was a similar pale around Calais. More fig- uratively still, the English printer William Caxton wrote in 1483, “The abbot and 21 monks went for to dwelle in deserte for to kepe more strayte- lye the profession of theyr pale.” Three centuries later and three thousand miles away, Thomas Jefferson referred to “within the pale of their own laws.”