He would want a real woman, not a pale imitation.
Training was a pale imitation of battle, but he would be satisfied with it.
Any other woman would be a substitute, a pale imitation.
What they have access to, however, is a pale imitation.
The pieces had been unpacked and set together in a pale imitation of a working system.
So how successful is a pale imitation going to be, 30 years down the line?
Didn't you turn into a pale imitation of a Yank instead?
For Ritter the pale imitation left much to be desired.
The new child was a pale imitation of the old.
Now I learned that both the playing and the training were pale imitations of the real thing.
Idiome