Literary notes about pallid (AI summary)
Writers frequently invoke "pallid" to paint a picture of lifelessness or eerie detachment, using the word both to describe physical appearances and to evoke an atmosphere of melancholy or foreboding. It appears on character portraits that range from the ghostly, almost cadaverous quality found in figures such as in [1] and [2] to the diminished, fear-stricken expressions noted in [3] and [4]. The term also extends beyond human features, lending a spectral quality to landscapes and skies—as when a "pallid eastern sky" underscores the fragile beauty of dawn in [5] or when the muted hues of an environment contribute to an unearthly ambience in [6]. In this varied usage, "pallid" becomes a powerful device for emphasizing the interplay between physical decay, emotional desolation, and the ephemeral quality of existence.
- Bathsheba, pallid as a corpse on end, gazed back at him in the same wild way.
— from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy - Jean Valjean lay there pallid and motionless.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - He maintained the gaze until the victim of it had become satisfactorily pallid with terror, then he said— “What does the old rip want with me?”
— from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain - It seemed to me that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still as he listened to his master’s question.
— from The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle - She loved upon the balcony To anticipate the break of day, When on the pallid eastern sky
— from Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin - It extinguished the blue of the sky—made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washed-out.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain
