pallor

American  

[pal-er] / ˈpæl ər /

noun

• pallors
  plural

1. unusual or extreme paleness, as from fear, ill health, or death; wanness.

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pallor British  

/ ˈpælə /

noun

1. a pale condition, esp when unnatural

   fear gave his face a deathly pallor

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• pallors
  plural

Etymology

Origin of pallor

1650–60; < Latin: paleness, equivalent to pall ( ēre ) to be pale + -or -or ¹

Explanation

When you’ve got the flu, that pale, sickly color of your skin is called a pallor. Other causes of pallor include shock, stress, or 10 days spent indoors trying to beat your new video game. Pallor comes from the Latin word pallere, which just means to “be pale.” That’s easy enough to remember, right? Pallor, pale. Don’t make yourself sick trying to memorize it, or you might get an unhealthy pallor from the strain.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

pallor pallors

What has many rows of teeth, a terrifying set of jaws and a corpse-like pallor?

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 17, 2024

If you know anything about Burton’s movies, you know that they tend to feature characters who embody all the qualities of a sickly Victorian-era child: waifish, sunken doe-eye and gaunt faces with a deathlike pallor.

From Salon ● Sep. 15, 2024

A key problem is the lighting - a single overhead source, which gives the images a slightly garish sheen and each person's skin an unhealthy pallor.

From BBC ● Aug. 24, 2023

Here, too, the mood couldn’t have been more different from the year prior, when the slap cast a pallor on the celebration.

From Seattle Times ● Mar. 13, 2023

The stark pallor gave way to soft blossoms of color as her yellowed, paper-thin skin warmed.

From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda

Pleasing blushes or pallors are never seen on it.

From A Charming Fellow, Volume I (of 3) by Frances Eleanor Trollope

Content in purple lustre clad, Kingly serene, and golden glad; No demi hues of sad contrition, No pallors of enforced submission; Give me such content as this, And keep a while the rosy bliss.

From Life Without and Life Within or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and poems. by Margaret Fuller

Congo gleams, college boy pallors, the smiles of black and white men and women interlace.

From A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago by Ben Hecht

The sight of his scared face, his starts and pallors and sudden harkenings, unstrung me; and when he dropped and broke a dish, I fairly leaped out of my seat.

From Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson

The paper words seem to bedeck with blossom these shores of pestilence, this Valley of Death, with their countless pallors of barren lies.

From Under Fire: the story of a squad by Fitzwater Wray