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Question for @Crash- OK, what is this "pale" thing that we're "beyond"?
NO CHEATING- No fair looking that up.
Grin. I actually know the answer: a group of counties including Dublin and environs nearby, marked as under the control of the British gummint, when most of Ireland lay beyond that fence. "Pale" connotes the edge of enforced British control.
Outside the bounds of morality, good behavior or judgment; unacceptable. For example, She thought taking the boys to a topless show was beyond the pale. The noun pale, from the Latin palum, meant “a stake for fences” or “a fence made from such stakes.” By extension it came to be used for an area confined by a fence and for any boundary, limit, or restriction, both of these meanings dating from the late 1300s. The pale referred to in the idiom is usually taken to mean the English Pale, the part of Ireland under English rule, and therefore, as perceived by its rulers, within the bounds of civilization.
Yes, very close- "pales" were originally the large wooden stakes which were used to encircle and fence outpost communities out at the very edge of "civilization". You're correct with respect to the terminology being adapted in parts of Ireland, but the conceptual terminology likely originally evolved in Western Europe as the geographical limits beyond which lay "the netherlands". Beyond the pale lay the netherlands.
Comments
He deserves jail time, not more freebies.
Shows what we are dealing with here. "Convicts are cool".
NO CHEATING- No fair looking that up.
Outside the bounds of morality, good behavior or judgment; unacceptable. For example, She thought taking the boys to a topless show was beyond the pale. The noun pale, from the Latin palum, meant “a stake for fences” or “a fence made from such stakes.” By extension it came to be used for an area confined by a fence and for any boundary, limit, or restriction, both of these meanings dating from the late 1300s. The pale referred to in the idiom is usually taken to mean the English Pale, the part of Ireland under English rule, and therefore, as perceived by its rulers, within the bounds of civilization.