I'd like to focus in on the meaning of 'pale' which is used in color description.
My dictionary, OALD, says 'pale' in such case means "light in colour; containing a lot of white".
It shows me some examples; pale blue eyes: I understand; a paler shade of green: ditto.
Then I have two questions.
- a pale sky (from OALD) … Does it mean its basic color depend on time and weather, or pale blue? Or is there another tacit agreement on its basic color?
- pale eyes (Ollivander's eyes, from p.308, Harry Potter 4) … Does it mean a specific basic color, or a color depending on readers' imagination?
I’d be happy if you could help me.
Best Answer
For both of your numbered examples, I would expect that "blue" is the implied base color. For the sky, blue is the obvious choice; without a further specifier such as "pale grey", blue pretty much has to be assumed. For eyes, a wide variety of colors may be possible, but blue and brown are the two primary choices, and of the two, "pale brown" would not be written as such (it would be "tan", or "tawny", or "hazel"); and any other base eye color would be unusual enough to be specified: "pale green", "pale bluish-gray", etc.