pale vs soft

pale

adj
  • Feeble, faint. 

  • Light in color. 

  • Having a pallor (a light color, especially due to sickness, shock, fright etc.). 

verb
  • To make pale; to diminish the brightness of. 

  • To turn pale; to lose colour. 

  • To enclose with pales, or as if with pales; to encircle or encompass; to fence off. 

  • To become insignificant. 

noun
  • Limits, bounds (especially before of). 

  • A vertical band down the middle of a shield. 

  • A cheese scoop. 

  • The bounds of morality, good behaviour or judgment in civilized company, in the phrase beyond the pale. 

  • A wooden stake; a picket. 

soft

adj
  • Quiet. 

  • Of a ferromagnetic material; a material that becomes essentially non-magnetic when an external magnetic field is removed, a material with a low magnetic coercivity. (compare hard) 

  • Expressing gentleness or tenderness; mild; conciliatory; courteous; kind. 

  • Requiring little or no effort; easy. 

  • Voiced; sonant; lenis. 

  • Voiceless. 

  • Gentle. 

  • Lacking strength or resolve; not tough, wimpy. 

  • Low in dissolved calcium compounds. 

  • Smooth and flexible; not rough, rugged, or harsh. 

  • Easily giving way under pressure. 

  • Emulated with software; not physically real. 

  • Not likely to cause addiction. 

  • Not containing alcohol. 

  • Weak in character; impressible. 

  • Not harsh or offensive to the sight; not glaring or jagged; pleasing to the eye. 

  • Gentle in action or motion; easy. 

  • Incomplete, or temporary; not a full action. 

  • Effeminate. 

  • Of a market: having more supply than demand; being a buyer's market. 

  • softcore. 

  • Palatalized. 

  • Not bright or intense. 

  • Physically or emotionally weak. 

  • Foolish. 

  • Agreeable to the senses. 

  • Having a slight angle from straight. 

  • Made up of nonparallel rays, tending to wrap around a subject and produce diffuse shadows. 

noun
  • A soft sound or part of a sound. 

  • A soft or foolish person; an idiot. 

How often have the words pale and soft occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )