baleful

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: bale=ful

CIDE DICTIONARY

baleful, a. [AS. bealoful. See Bale misery.].

•  Full of deadly or pernicious influence; destructive.  Shak.  [1913 Webster]

  "Four infernal rivers that disgorge
  Into the burning lake their baleful streams."  [1913 Webster]
•  Full of grief or sorrow; woeful; sad.  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

baleful, adj.
1 (esp. of a manner, look, etc.) gloomy, menacing.
2 harmful, malignant, destructive.

Derivative

balefully adv. balefulness n.

Etymology

BALE(2) + -FUL

THESAURUS

baleful

apocalyptic, bad, baneful, bitchy, black, bodeful, boding, corroding, corrosive, corrupting, corruptive, counterproductive, cussed, damaging, dark, deadly, deleterious, detrimental, dire, direful, disadvantageous, disserviceable, distressing, doomful, dreary, evil, evil-starred, fateful, foreboding, gloomy, harmful, hateful, hurtful, ill, ill-boding, ill-fated, ill-omened, ill-starred, inauspicious, iniquitous, injurious, invidious, lethal, lowering, malefic, maleficent, malevolent, malicious, malign, malignant, mean, menacing, mischievous, nasty, noisome, noxious, of evil portent, ominous, ornery, pernicious, poisonous, portending, portentous, prejudicial, scatheful, sinister, somber, threatening, toxic, unfavorable, unfortunate, unlucky, unpromising, unpropitious, untoward, venenate, veneniferous, venenous, venomous, vicious, virulent, wicked

ROGET THESAURUS

baleful

Badness

N badness, hurtfulness, virulence, evil doer, bane, plague spot, evil star, ill wind, hoodoo, Jonah, snake in the grass, skeleton in the closet, amari aliquid, thorn in the side, malignity, malevolence, tender mercies, ill-treatment, annoyance, molestation, abuse, oppression, persecution, outrage, misusage, injury, knockout drops, badness, peccancy, abomination, painfulness, pestilence, guilt, depravity, hurtful, harmful, scathful, baneful, baleful, injurious, deleterious, detrimental, noxious, pernicious, mischievous, full of mischief, mischief-making, malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome, prejudicial, disserviceable, disadvantageous, wide-wasting, unlucky, sinister, obnoxious, untoward, disastrous, oppressive, burdensome, onerous, malign, corrupting &c (corrupt), virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive, poisonous, deadly, destructive, inauspicious, bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful, horrid, horrible, dire, rank, peccant, foul, fulsome, rotten, rotten at the core, vile, base, villainous, mean, injured, deteriorated, unsatisfactory, exceptionable indifferent, below par, illcontrived, ill-conditioned, wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable, pitiful, pitiable, woeful, evil, wrong, depraved, shocking, reprehensible, hateful, hateful as a toad, abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded, damned, damnable, infernal, diabolic, unadvisable, unprofitable, incompetent, irremediable, badly, wrong, ill, to one's cost, where the shoe pinches, bad is the best: the worst come to the worst, herba mala presto cresco, wrongs unredressed or insults unavenged.