![baleful baleful](https://www.tekportal.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/baleful-7195.jpg)
adjective
- full of menacing or malign influences; pernicious.
- Obsolete. wretched; miserable.
adjective
- harmful, menacing, or vindictive
- archaic dejected
Old English bealu-full “dire, wicked, cruel,” from bealu “harm, injury, ruin, evil, mischief, wickedness, a noxious thing,” from Proto-Germanic *balwom (cf. Old Saxon balu, Old Frisian balu “evil,” Old High German balo “destruction,” Old Norse bol, Gothic balwjan “to torment”), from PIE root *bheleu- “to beat.” During Anglo-Saxon times, the noun was in poetic use only (e.g. bealubenn “mortal wound,” bealuĂ°onc “evil thought”), and for long baleful was extinct, but it was revived by modern romantic poets. Related: Balefully.