pallor - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
pallor (countable and uncountable, plural pallors)
- Unnatural paleness, especially as a sign of sickness or distress.
- ✤ Synonyms: pallidity, wanness
- ✤ * pallor of the complexion*
- ✤ ‘Sir,’ said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor, ‘that thing was not my master, and there’s the truth. My master’—here he looked round him and began to whisper—‘is a tall fine build of a man, and this was more of a dwarf.’1
- ✤ For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.2
- ✤ Over those seamed cheeks there was a certain pallor, a grayness caught from many a vigil3
- ✤ Catch-22 is defined by the sickly pallor of its visual palette (a jaundiced tint that at least goes with Yossarian’s point of view and phony liver pains) and the way it makes the slog of its characters’ deployment a little too literal.4
Etymology
From Middle English pallour, from Old French palor (“paleness, pallor”), from Latin pallor, from palleō (“to look pale, blanch”).5
Pronunciation
- (General American) IPA: /ˈpælɚ/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈpælə/
- Audio (US): 🔊
- Rhymes: -ælə(ɹ)
Printed 2026-07-23.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Footnotes
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1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Last Night”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 76: ↩
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1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Westminster[London]: Archibald Constable and Company, […], →OCLC, chapter II, page 20: ↩
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1900 April, Willa Sibert Cather, “Eric Hermannson’s Soul”, in The Cosmopolitan, volume XXVIII, number 6, New York, N.Y.: John Brisben Walker, →OCLC, page 633: ↩
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2019 May 16, Erik Adams, “A potent satire has its wings clipped in Catch-22”, in The A.V. Club , archived from the original on 1 September 2019: ↩
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Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “pallor (n.)”, in Online Etymology Dictionary. ↩