pallor

plural pallors · alternative obsolete pallour

1. countableuncountableUnnatural paleness, especially as a sign of sickness or distress.

   pallor of the complexion

   4 more examples

   ‘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.’

   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

   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.

   1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Westminster [London]: Archibald Constable and Company, […], →OCLC, chapter II, page 20

   Over those seamed cheeks there was a certain pallor, a grayness caught from many a vigil

   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

   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.

   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 01 Sep 2019

   Synonyms: pallidity, wanness