beyond the pale

Meanings

1. Of a person or their behaviour: outside the bounds of what is acceptable, or regarded as good judgment, morality, ethics, etc.
2. Used other than as an idiom; generally followed by of: beyond the extent or limits.

Etymology

From beyond + the + pale (“wooden stake, picket; fence made from wooden stakes, palisade; bounds, limits; territory or defensive area within a specific boundary or under a given jurisdiction”), suggesting that anything outside an authority’s jurisdiction is uncivilized. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there is insufficient evidence that the term originally referred to the English Pale, the part of Ireland directly under the control of the English government in the Late Middle Ages; or to the Pale of Settlement (Russian: Черта́ осе́длости (Čertá osédlosti)) which existed from 1791 to 1917 in the Russian Empire, where Jewish people were mostly relegated to living. The first attestation of this English translation of the Russian in the OED is 1890. The Google Ngram Viewer shows a fivefold increase in the use of the expression from 1801 to 1864.