[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 202, Issue 16

[robot at ultimax.com]

Yep, an individual stick is a "pale", ~2000 km of them was "The Pale of 
Settlement".

Everything else you said, too, except for the funny/grim part:
the sense of "Pale" as Tsarist Russians used it was directed *inward*.  
That is to say, the Pale was a north-south line in Russia *inside of 
which* (i.e., east) Jews were not allowed to settle, but for certain 
exceptions.  So the locus of "beyond the Pale" was closer to the Russian 
speaker of this phrase than the Pale itself.  Ironic, that.

I did not know about the Irish and French Pales!  But the cognate "pal" 
is Romance not Slavic, so I should have figured that out for myself.  
Thanks!

Quite a few Russkiis back in Catherine's day spoke French.  Until 
Pushkin came along, some Russian aristocrats never bothered to learn 
Russian, the language of the serfs.  Perhaps the French usage is where 
they got the word.  Anyone have a copy of the OED handy?

K3

On Sun, 5 Jul 2020 10:27:19 -0500, William Flynn Wallace 
<foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
> A pale is a wooden or iron stake put up around some place to protect 
> it.
> The fence is called a palisade.  So 'beyond the pale' means outside of 
> us -
.                                  
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> foreign, unwanted, dangerous etc.
> 
> bill w