balefulとは

意味・読み方・使い方

語源

From Middle English baleful, balful, baluful, from 古期英語 bealuful, which being equivalent to bealu +‎ -ful. Surface analysis as bale +‎ -ful. See bale for further etymology.

発音

• IPA^(key): /ˈbeɪl.fəl/

形容詞

baleful (comparative more baleful, superlative most baleful)

1. Portending evil; ominous.
   • 1873, James Thomson (B.V.), The City of Dreadful Night

     The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms,

     Amidst the soundless solitudes immense

     Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.

   • 1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 186:

     According to them all sorcerers, necromancers and evil-doers were born under the baleful influence of the seventh calendic sign[.]

   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1943, Chapter XII, p. 194, [1]

     […] he went off alone with his family, and, watched by the day's red baleful eye, pumped the pump-car homeward, […]

   • 1949, Naomi Replansky, “Complaint of the Ignorant Wizard” in Ring Song (published 1952):

     I learned the speech of birds; now every tree
     Screams out to me a baleful prophecy.

   • 2020 November 13, Duncan Campbell, “Peter Sutcliffe obituary”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     Few people cast a more baleful shadow over postwar Britain than Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”, who has died aged 74

2. (obsolete) Miserable, wretched, distressed, suffering.
   • 1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book I), line 56

     round he throws his baleful eyes, that witnessed huge affliction and dismay ...

派生語

• balefully
• unbaleful