pallid (adj.)

Proto-Indo-European root meaning "pale."

It forms all or part of: appall; falcon; fallow (adj.) "pale yellow, brownish yellow;" Fauvist; Lloyd; pale (adj.); pallid; pallor; palomino; Peloponnesus; polio; poliomyelitis.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit palitah "gray," panduh "whitish, pale;" Greek pelios "livid, dark;" polios "gray" (of hair, wolves, waves); Latin pallere "to be pale," pallidus "pale, pallid, wan, colorless;" Old Church Slavonic plavu, Lithuanian palvas "sallow;" Welsh llwyd "gray;" Old English fealo, fealu "dull-colored, yellow, brown." It also forms the root of words for "pigeon" in Greek (peleia), Latin (palumbes), and Old Prussian (poalis).

early 14c., of human skin or complexion, "of a whitish appearance, bloodless, pallid," from Old French paile "pale, light-colored" (12c., Modern French pâle), from Latin pallidus "pale, pallid, wan, colorless," from pallere "be pale, grow pale," from PIE root *pel- (1) "pale." Pallid is a doublet.

From mid-14c. of colors, "lacking chromatic intensity, approaching white;" from late-14c. of non-human objects or substances (liquors, etc.). Figurative use also is from late 14c. Related: Palely; palish; paleness. Paleface, supposed translating a typical North American Indian word for "European," is attested from 1822 in American English.

c. 1400, pallour, "paleness, dullness," from Old French palor "paleness, whiteness" (12c.) and directly from Latin pallor, from pallere "be pale, turn pale," related to pallus "dark-colored, dusky," from PIE root *pel- (1) "pale."

[P]aleness in the Mediterranean is not so much the lack of color as a sickly, yellowish, sallow complexion, compared here to the hue of a gilded bronze statue. Sappho compared it to the color of dead grass. [Daniel H. Garrison, note on pallidor in poem 81 in "The Student's Catullus, 2nd ed., 1995]