baleful
/ˈbeɪl.fəl/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 2.15 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Example Sentences
- "The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms, Amidst the soundless solitudes immense Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs."
- "According to them all sorcerers, necromancers and evil-doers were born under the baleful influence of the seventh calendic sign[.]"
- "[…] he went off alone with his family, and, watched by the day's red baleful eye, pumped the pump-car homeward, […]"
- "I learned the speech of birds; now every tree Screams out to me a baleful prophecy."
- "Few people cast a more baleful shadow over postwar Britain than Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”, who has died aged 74"
- "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."
Etymology
From Middle English baleful, balful, baluful, from Old English bealuful, which was equivalent to bealu + -ful. By surface analysis, bale (“evil, woe”) + -ful. See bale for further etymology.