baleful

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 +‎ -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, Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1943, Chapter XII, p. 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

2. (obsolete) Miserable, wretched, distressed, suffering.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], OCLC 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554, line 56:

     round he throws his baleful eyes, that witnessed huge affliction and dismay ...

Derived terms

• balefully
• unbaleful

Translations

ominous

Bulgarian: зловещ (bg) (zlovešt) Dutch: onheilspellend (nl) (1), miserabel (nl) ; wanhopig (nl) (2) Finnish: turmiollinen (fi), uhkaava (fi), pahanenteinen French: sinistre (fr) Galician: ominoso, funesto Italian: funesto (it) Old English: bealu Polish: złowieszczy (pl) Russian: па́губный (ru) m (págubnyj) Serbo-Croatian: zloslutan (sh), zloguk (sh) Spanish: funesto (es), torvo (es) Ukrainian: лиховісний m (lyxovisnyj), зловіщий m (zloviščyj)

wretched

Maori: tūreikura Serbo-Croatian: zlosretan (sh)

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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.