WordWealth: baleful

bale·ful , adj.

1. full of menacing or malign influences; pernicious; 2. Obs. wretched; miserable.

[bef. 1000; ME; OE bealofull. See BALE2, -FUL]

—bale'ful·ly, adv.

—bale'ful·ness, n.

—Syn.1. harmful, malign, injurious, detrimental; evil, wicked; deadly. (Random House Webster's Unabridged). Look at Thesaurus

Emotionally, of course, Strauss's clangorous biblical shocker is well within the compass of an adolescent. Set verbatim from Oscar Wilde's play, it centers on the passion of Herod's stepdaughter for John the Baptist, who languishes in a cistern, hurling baleful prophecies. When saint and sinner meet in the moonlight, he recoils at her advances, but before the night is out, she is showering kisses on his severed head: her reward (on a silver platter) for the striptease known as the Dance of the Seven Veils. —— Austin Baer and Nancy Dalva in Classical Music and Dance; Arts & Entertainment Preview; The Atlantic; July/August 2001

The foreign-policy community's anxiety springs from convictions like those expressed by Warren Zimmermann, the former ambassador to Yugoslavia, when he declared that the war in Bosnia, for instance, has "baleful implications for . . . the United States," because what is at stake there is "the values of the melting pot." America's anxiety over the fragmentation of foreign states and societies arises from our sense that American society is fragmenting, culturally and ethnically. We are desperate to repair what the foreign-policy community terms "failed states" and "divided societies," for such success would prove to us that the liberal notions of pluralism and tolerance upon which we would like to believe that American unity was founded remain vital enough to build communities abroad and, perhaps more important, at home. —— Benjamin Schwarz in The Diversity Myth; The Atlantic, May 1995
 

The trio burst into "One Fine Day" from Madam Butterfly, and from one of the canvas booths emerged Miss Trixie van Tonder, a broad, thuglike young person with the loose-swinging movements of an orangutan. She was dressed in a black leotard, one of her muscular shoulders bare. Black ringlets cascaded onto her shoulders, and her small, baleful eyes were heavily mascaraed. The irrigation-dam men went wild, flung hats in the air, smashed beer bottles, whistled shrilly through their fingers. —— Sheila Gordon in The Greatest Show on Earth; The Atlantic, Dec 1996

Usage Note (American Heritage Dictionary)

Baleful and baneful overlap in meaning, but baleful usually applies to something that is menacing or foreshadows evil: a baleful look. Baneful most often describes that which is actually harmful or destructive: baneful effects of their foreign policy. Look at Thesaurus in depth

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