bales
/beɪlz/
bales is the plural of bale.
bales is the third-person singular simple present indicative of bale.
Meaning of bale
Noun (1)
bale (uncountable)
- Evil, especially considered as an active force for destruction or death.
- Suffering, woe, torment.
- That other ſwayne, like aſhes deadly pale,
Lay in the lap of death, rewing his wretched bale.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, page 441
- That other ſwayne, like aſhes deadly pale,
Noun (2)
bale (plural bales)
- A large fire, a conflagration or bonfire.
- A funeral pyre.
- A beacon-fire.
Noun (3)
bale (plural bales)
- A rounded bundle or package of goods in a cloth cover, and corded for storage or transportation.
- So having made up my mind, I packed up in bales a quantity of precious stuffs suited for sea-trade and repaired with them from Baghdad-city to Bassorah-town, where I found ship ready for sea, and in her a company of considerable merchants.1885, Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 563
Phrases with bales
Words that rhyme with bales
Questions about bales
- What is bales the plural of?
- Bales is the plural of bale.
- How do you pronounce bales?
- Bales is pronounced /beɪlz/.
Words near bales in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bales (page history and authors); bale (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-bales.ogg.
Cite this entry: “bales.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bales. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.