[Julie Steiner]

Yeah, Michael, I guess you're right that if it walks like a dux and talks like a dux, it's probably a dux.

Here are a few valley-related terms. Next to "cwm," "kloof," and "chine," "vale" really doesn't seem all that odd anymore.

[Ann Drysdale]

I live in an area of Wales known as The Valleys. I live in one of them. Over the other side of the mountain in the next valley, is Ebbw Vale (Glan Ebwy in Welsh). A little south of it is Cwm (another name, in Welsh, for a vale or valley).

Cwm is pronounced "coom", with a short "oo", and it is a source of great amusement when visitors from elsewhere pronounce it "quim".

In the context of Dr Grammarfuss's question, though, I'd say a valley was a geographial location, a vale a smaller enclave, with an implication of isolation and peace.

.

[Angela France]

I tend to think of a vale as wider and flatter than a valley - the opposite. of some here. This view is influenced no doubt by growing up in Gloucestershire where we refer to the 'Vale of Evesham' as the floodplain around the river Avon (where the town of Evesham is located) which is known for its fruit-growing and market gardening.

I see a vale as an area and a valley as a geographical feature.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

The word "valedictorian" is really only used in the US and Canada. Brian is British. I believe he was a valet. In Kingston.

But when I moved to France, I had to say "vale" xto the Vale.

[Jerome Betts]

And there's the Vale of Gloucester and the Vale of the White Horse. I think Roger's poetic and somewhat archaic agrees with the COD's archaic or poetic (except in place names).It would be interesting to see whether all the place names in vale refer to broader and flatter areas than valleys, or are just an older form of valley.

[Clive Watkins]

And there's the Vale of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, which I know well, another proper noun of course. It's a broader, more open area.

Clive

[Susan Breeding]

Thomas Moore

There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.

http://www.bartleby.com/270/2/16.html

[Erik Olson]

Very apropos, even with a definition therein. Thanks Susan.