• enPR: dāl, IPA: /deɪl/

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

dale (plural dales)

1. (mainly, Britain, slightly dated outside Yorkshire etc.) A valley, often in an otherwise hilly area.

   Synonyms: dell, dells, vale

   • c. 1587, Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love:

     And we will all the pleasures prove / That hills and valleys, dales and fields, / Woods, or steepy mountain yields

   • 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. […], published 1816, →OCLC ↗, page 57 ↗:

     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: [...]

   • 1869 May, Anthony Trollope, “The Clock House at Nuncombe Putney”, in He Knew He Was Right, volume I, London: Strahan and Company, […], →OCLC ↗, page 113 ↗:

     The country about Nuncombe Putney is perhaps as pretty as any in England. It is beyond the river Teign, between that and Dartmoor, and is so lovely in all its variations of rivers, rivulets, broken ground, hills and dales, old broken, battered, time-worn timber, green knolls, rich pastures, and heathy common, that the wonder is that English lovers of scenery know so little of it.

2. The sunken or grooved portion of the surface of a vinyl record.

   Antonyms: hill

• dollar

• French: vallon
• German: Tal
• Italian: valle
• Portuguese: vale
• Russian: доли́на
• Spanish: valle

Related to Low German daal or Dutch daal and French dalle. Attested in English since the seventeenth century.

dale (plural dales)

1. (archaic) A trough or spout to carry off water, as from a pump.

• IPA: /deɪl/

1. Surname for someone living in a dale.
2. A male given name.
3. A hamlet in Ainstable, Eden (OS grid ref NY5444).
4. A village/and/wcomm in west Pembrokeshire (OS grid ref SM8005).
5. A village in Fjaler, Vestland.
6. A village in Vaksdal, Vestland.
7. A village in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland.
8. woreda in Ethiopia.
9. A community in Port Hope, Northumberland County.
10. A number of places in USA:
    1. An unincorporated community in Hamilton County, Illinois.
    2. A town in Spencer County, Indiana.
    3. An unincorporated community in Boone County, Indiana.
    4. A former community in Tobacco, Gladwin County.
    5. A ghost town in Clay County, Minnesota.
    6. A ghost town in Custer County, Nebraska.
    7. A hamlet in Wyoming County, New York.
    8. An unincorporated community/and/CDP in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma.
    9. An unincorporated community in Grant County, Oregon.
    10. A borough in Cambria County.
    11. An unincorporated community in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
    12. An unincorporated community/and/CDP in Beaufort County, South Carolina.
    13. An unincorporated community in Caldwell County, Texas.
    14. An unincorporated community in Tyler County, West Virginia.
    15. A town/and/CDP therein, in Outagamie County.