Word.ws English Dictionary

dale

/deɪl/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Multicultural London English/deu/

dale noun: a valley, often in an otherwise hilly area.

Noun (1)

dale (plural dales)

  1. (UK, slightly dated outside Yorkshire etc.) A valley, often in an otherwise hilly area.
    • And we will all the pleasures prove / That hills and valleys, dales and fields, / Woods, or steepy mountain yieldsc. 1587, Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
    • Five miles meandering with a mazy motion, / Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, / Then reached the caverns measureless to man, / And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: [...]1797, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “Kubla Khan: Or A Vision in a Dream”, in Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision: The Pains of Sleep, London: […] John Murray, […], by William Bulmer and Co. […]...
    Synonyms:
    dell, dells, vale
  2. The sunken or grooved portion of the surface of a vinyl record.
    Antonyms:
    hill

Noun (2)

dale (plural dales)

  1. (archaic) A trough or spout to carry off water, as from a pump.
    • The pump-dale scupper is that to which the dale leads, that conveys the water from the pumps to the side on the lower deck of large ships.1853, John Fincham, An Outline of Ship Building in Four Parts, page 40

Proper noun capitalized: Dale

Dale

  1. A surname from Middle English for someone living in a dale.
  2. A male given name transferred from the surname.
  3. A female given name transferred from the surname.
  4. A hamlet in Ainstable parish, Eden district, Cumbria, England (OS grid ref NY5444).
  5. A village and community in west Pembrokeshire, Wales (OS grid ref SM8005).
  6. A village in Fjaler, Vestland, Norway.
  7. A village in Vaksdal, Vestland, Norway.
  8. A village in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland.
  9. A woreda in Ethiopia.
  10. A community in Port Hope, Northumberland County, Ontario, Canada.
  11. An unincorporated community in Hamilton County, Illinois.
  12. A township in McLean County, Illinois.
Show 18 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. A town in Spencer County, Indiana.
  2. An unincorporated community in Boone County, Indiana.
  3. A township in O'Brien County, Iowa.
  4. A township in Kingman County, Kansas.
  5. A former community in Tobacco Township, Gladwin County, Michigan.
  6. A ghost town in Clay County, Minnesota.
  7. A township in Cottonwood County, Minnesota.
  8. A township in Atchison County, Missouri.
  9. A ghost town in Custer County, Nebraska.
  10. A hamlet in Wyoming County, New York.
  11. An unincorporated community and census-designated place in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma.
  12. An unincorporated community in Grant County, Oregon.
  13. A borough in Cambria County, Pennsylvania.
  14. An unincorporated community in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
  15. An unincorporated community and census-designated place in Beaufort County, South Carolina.
  16. An unincorporated community in Caldwell County, Texas.
  17. An unincorporated community in Tyler County, West Virginia.
  18. A town and census-designated place therein, in Outagamie County, Wisconsin.

dale meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

dale in Tamil

டேல்

dale in Bengali

উপত্যকা

dale in Malayalam

മലയടിവാരം, താഴ്വര

dale in Kannada

ಕಣಿವೆ
More languagesFewer languages
dale in Odia
ଡେଲ୍
dale in Pashto
راغه rāghə
dale in Arabic
ثَنِيَّة ṯaniyya
dale in Persian
دره dare

Examples of dale in a sentence

  • Dale Earnhardt just put the chrome horn to that lapped car in front of him.
  • Dale huffed up to the counter and fired her battle-axe stare at the attendant.
  • Lambley is famous for its ‘dumbles.’ A dumble being a local name for a shallow dale with a stream.

All 10 example sentences with dale

Synonyms of dale

Antonyms

Forms of dale

Noun
pluraldales
Proper noun
alternative formDayle

Plural of dale: dales

Origin of dale

From Middle English dale, from Old English dæl, from Proto-West Germanic *dal, from Proto-Germanic *dalą.

Related to Low German daal or Dutch daal (“lowers, descends”) and French dalle (“trough; conduit”). Attested in English since the seventeenth century.

Words formed from dale

Phrases with dale

3 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with dale

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dale

What does dale mean?
Dale means a valley, often in an otherwise hilly area.
What is dale in Tamil?
Dale in Tamil is டேல். See Dale meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is dale?
Dale can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce dale?
Dale is pronounced /deu/ (Multicultural London English).
What is the plural of dale?
The plural of dale is dales.

Words near dale in the dictionary

  1. Dalchonzie
  2. Dalcross
  3. Dalcu
  4. daldinone
  5. daldinones
  6. dale
  7. Dale County
  8. Dalebank
  9. Dalecarlia
  10. Dalecarlian
  11. Dalecarlian horse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dale (page history and authors); Dale (page history and authors); dale (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dale (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dale (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dale (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dale (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); راغه (Pashto) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dale.wav.

Cite this entry: “dale.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dale. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.