baleful

• balefull (archaic)

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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈbeɪl.fəl/

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; 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 ...

• balefully
• unbaleful

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

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈbaːlful/, /ˈbalful/

baleful

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

• balfulli

• English: baleful

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