Word.ws English Dictionary

balefull

balefull is the archaic form of baleful.

Meaning of baleful

Adjective

baleful (comparative more baleful, superlative most baleful)

  1. Portending evil; ominous.
    • The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms,
      Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
      Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.1873, James Thomson (B.V.), The City of Dreadful Night
  2. (obsolete) Miserable, wretched, distressed, suffering.
    • Thou balefull Messenger, out of my sight:1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  3. (obsolete) Deadly, mortal.
    • With balefull weedes, and precious Iuiced flowers, / The earth that's Natures mother, is her Tombe,c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
    Synonyms:
    fatal, lethal, terminal

Forms of balefull

comparativemore balefull
superlativemost balefull

Questions about balefull

What is balefull the archaic form of?
Balefull is the archaic form of baleful.

Words near balefull in the dictionary

  1. baleets
  2. balefire
  3. balefires
  4. baleful
  5. balefulest
  6. balefull
  7. balefullest
  8. balefully
  9. balefulness
  10. balei
  11. baleless

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: balefull (page history and authors); baleful (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “balefull.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/balefull. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.