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pallid

UK/ˈpælɪd/US/ˈpælɪd/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,308 of 15,258leans written

Pallid means unhealthily pale. A pallid face, pallid and drawn, pallid light.

It is stronger than pale and always suggests something wrong, since a pallid complexion is one a doctor would notice. Of a performance it means feeble and washed out, which is the figurative use.

Definitions of pallid

  1. 1adjectivepallidUnhealthily pale.C1

    “After weeks in hospital, his face was thin and pallid.”

pallid is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin pallidus means pale, from pallere, to be pale; pale is a doublet.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *pelH-

  2. Latin

    pallidus

  3. English, today

    pallid

From Latin pallidus. From Latin pallidus. a doublet of pale.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

pallid in the wild

  • The pallid harrier (Circus macrourus) is a species of harrier, a bird of prey in the family Accipitridae.

    Pallid harrier

  • The pallid swift (Apus pallidus) is a swift (order Apodiformes).

    Pallid swift

  • The pallid bat (Antrozous pallidus) is a species of bat that ranges from western Canada to central Mexico.

    Pallid bat

  • The pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus) is an endangered species of ray-finned fish, endemic to the waters of the Missouri and lower Mississippi River basins of the United States.

    Pallid sturgeon

  • A member of the sturgeon family, Acipenseridae, which originated during the Cretaceous period 70 million years ago, the pallid sturgeon has changed little since then.

    Pallid sturgeon

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.