baleful

English

Alternative forms

• balefull (archaic)

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbeɪl.fəl/

Adjective

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, 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:

     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.
   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, ”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies.  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , line 48:

     Thou balefull Messenger, out of my sight:

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. , London: [Samuel Simmons], , →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: , London: Basil Montagu Pickering , 1873, →OCLC, line 56:

     round he throws his baleful eyes, that witnessed huge affliction and dismay […]

3. (obsolete) Deadly, mortal.
   • c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 60:

     With balefull weedes, and precious Iuiced flowers, / The earth that's Natures mother, is her Tombe,

Derived terms

• balefully
• unbaleful

Translations

Middle English

Alternative forms

• balful, baluful, balefulle, balefule, balleful, balefull, balful, balfulle

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbaːlful/, /ˈbalful/

Adjective

baleful

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

Derived terms

• balfulli

Descendants

• English: baleful

References

• “bāleful, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-05-19.