baleful

Etymology

From Middle English baleful, balful, baluful, from Old English bealuful, which being equivalent to bealu + -ful. By surface analysis, bale (“evil, woe”) + -ful. See bale for further etymology.

adj

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
   According to them all sorcerers, necromancers and evil-doers were born under the baleful influence of the seventh calendic sign[.] 1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 186
   […] he went off alone with his family, and, watched by the day's red baleful eye, pumped the pump-car homeward, […] 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XII, in Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 194
   I learned the speech of birds; now every tree Screams out to me a baleful prophecy. 1949, Naomi Replansky, “Complaint of the Ignorant Wizard” in Ring Song (published 1952)
   Few people cast a more baleful shadow over postwar Britain than Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”, who has died aged 74 November 13 2020, Duncan Campbell, “Peter Sutcliffe obituary”, in The Guardian
2. (obsolete) Miserable, wretched, distressed, suffering.