Wiktionary

baleful

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Middle English baleful, balful, baluful, from Old English bealuful, which was equivalent to bealu +‎ -ful. By surface analysis, bale (“evil, woe”) +‎ -ful. See bale for further etymology.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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baleful (comparative more baleful, superlative most baleful)

  1. Portending evil; ominous.
    • 1873, James Thomson (B.V.), The City of Dreadful Night:
      The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms,
      Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
      Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.
    • 1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 186:
      According to them all sorcerers, necromancers and evil-doers were born under the baleful influence of the seventh calendic sign[.]
    • 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XII, in Capricornia‎[1], New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 194:
      […] he went off alone with his family, and, watched by the day's red baleful eye, pumped the pump-car homeward, […]
    • 1949, Naomi Replansky, “Complaint of the Ignorant Wizard” in Ring Song (published 1952):
      I learned the speech of birds; now every tree
      Screams out to me a baleful prophecy.
    • 2020 November 13, Duncan Campbell, “Peter Sutcliffe obituary”, in The Guardian‎[2]:
      Few people cast a more baleful shadow over postwar Britain than Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”, who has died aged 74
    • 2023 September 2, Simon Schama, “The real Rino”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 2:
      In their excellent essay in The Atlantic endorsing disqualification, Luttig and Tribe remind us that the first president, in his 1796 Farewell Address, had foreseen many of the elements of this baleful disaster.
  2. (obsolete) Miserable, wretched, distressed, suffering.
  3. (obsolete) Deadly, mortal.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Middle English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Old English bealuful. By surface analysis, bale +‎ -ful.

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ˈbaːlful/, /ˈbalful/

Adjective

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baleful

  1. evil, horrible, malicious
  2. (rare) dangerous, harmful, injurious
  3. (rare) worthless, petty, lowly

Derived terms

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Descendants

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  • English: baleful

References

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