Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Baleful
1.
Full of deadly or pernicious influence; destructive.
“Baleful enemies.” Shak.
Four infernal rivers that disgorge
Into the burning lake their
Into the burning lake their
baleful
streams. Milton.
2.
Full of grief or sorrow; woeful; sad.
[Archaic]
Webster 1828 Edition
Baleful
BA'LEFUL
, a.[See Bale.] Woeful; sad; sorrowful; full of grief; producing misery; as, a baleful smart; baleful eyes.2.
Mischievous; destructive; pernicious; calamitous; deadly; as, baleful enemies; baleful war.Definition 2024
baleful
baleful
English
Alternative forms
- balefull (archaic)
Adjective
baleful (comparative more baleful, superlative most baleful)
- Portending evil; ominous.
- 1674, John Milton: Paradise Lost (Book I)
- round he throws his baleful eyes, that witnessed huge affliction and dismay.
- 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.
- 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, […]
- 1674, John Milton: Paradise Lost (Book I)
- Miserable, wretched, distressed, suffering.