Word.ws English Dictionary

baneful

baneful adjective: poisonous, deadly.

Adjective

baneful (comparative more baneful, superlative most baneful)

  1. (archaic) Poisonous, deadly.
    • [S]ome fell ſerpent in his cave expects / The traveller's approach, batten'd vvith herbs / Of baneful juice to fury, forth he looks / Hideous, and lies coil'd all around his den.1791, Homer, “[The Iliad.] Book XXII.”, in W[illiam] Cowper, transl., The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, Translated into Blank Verse, […], volume I, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], →OCLC, page 577...
  2. Harmful, injurious.
    • This contempt of the understanding in early life has more baneful consequences than is commonly supposed […]1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC
    • In this way writers and others seeking a monopoly for their views accepted and encouraged the baneful principle that it was for the party and state authorities to permit or prohibit this or that form of art.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume III: The Breakdown, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozkład (in...

baneful meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

baneful in Tamil

அழிவார்ந்த, அழிவைத் தரத்தக்க, கேடார்ந்த, கேடு விளைவிக்கின்ற, கேடு விளைவிக்கிற, நஞ்சுடைய

baneful in Urdu

مہلک

baneful in Bengali

ক্ষতিকর, ধ্বংসাত্মক

Synonyms of baneful

Antonyms

Forms of baneful

comparativemore baneful
superlativemost baneful

Origin of baneful

From bane + -ful.

Questions about baneful

What does baneful mean?
Baneful means poisonous, deadly.
What is baneful in Tamil?
Baneful in Tamil is அழிவார்ந்த, அழிவைத் தரத்தக்க, கேடார்ந்த. See Baneful meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is baneful?
Baneful is an adjective.

Words near baneful in the dictionary

  1. bane of someone's life
  2. baneberries
  3. baneberry
  4. baned
  5. Baneelon
  6. baneful
  7. banefulest
  8. banefullest
  9. banefully
  10. banefulness
  11. banend

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: baneful (page history and authors); baneful (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); baneful (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); baneful (Bengali Wiktionary) (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: “baneful.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/baneful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.