baleful

comparative more baleful · superlative most baleful · alternative obsolete balefull

1. Portending evil; ominous.

   I learned the speech of birds; now every tree Screams out to me a baleful prophecy.

   1949, Naomi Replansky, “Complaint of the Ignorant Wizard” in Ring Song (published 1952)

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   The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms, Amidst the soundless solitudes immense Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.

   1873, James Thomson (B.V.), The City of Dreadful Night

   According to them all sorcerers, necromancers and evil-doers were born under the baleful influence of the seventh calendic sign[.]

   1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 186

   […] he went off alone with his family, and, watched by the day's red baleful eye, pumped the pump-car homeward, […]

   1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XII, in Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 194

   Few people cast a more baleful shadow over postwar Britain than Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”, who has died aged 74

   2020 November 13, Duncan Campbell, “Peter Sutcliffe obituary”, in The Guardian

   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.

   2023 September 2, Simon Schama, “The real Rino”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 2

   Synonyms: foreboding, portentous, augurous, bodeful, boding, dire, disastrous, divine

2. obsoleteMiserable, wretched, distressed, suffering.

   Thou balefull Messenger, out of my sight:

   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[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii], line 48

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

   1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, line 56

3. obsoleteDeadly, mortal.

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

   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[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii], page 60

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   If some were akin to the Formori of the baleful fogs in Irish mythic history and the Mallt-y-nos, those she-demons of marshy lands immortalised by the Welsh bards, creatures huge and uncouth "with grey and glaring eyes," there were others who exceeded in beauty anything human.

   1922, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals, London: Longmans, Green and Co., page 14

   Synonyms: fatal, lethal, terminal