different between fearful vs baleful

English

Alternative forms

• fearefull (obsolete)
• fearfull (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English ferful, fervol, equivalent to fear +? -ful.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?f??f?l/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?f??f?l/
• Rhymes: -???f?l
• Hyphenation: fear?ful

Adjective

fearful (comparative fearfuller or fearfuler or more fearful, superlative fearfullest or fearfulest or most fearful)

1. Frightening.
2. Tending to fear; timid.

   a fearful boy

3. (dated) Terrible; shockingly bad.
4. (now rare) Frightened; filled with terror.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.4:

     Those two great champions did attonce pursew / The fearefull damzell with incessant payns […]

Synonyms

• (frightened): frightened, timid, timorous
• See also Thesaurus:afraid and Thesaurus:cowardly

Translations

Adverb

fearful (comparative more fearful, superlative most fearful)

1. (dialect) Extremely; fearfully.

Further reading

• fearful in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• fearful in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• Lauffer

English

Alternative forms

• balefull (archaic)

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?be?l.f?l/

Adjective

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.

   • 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.
2. 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 ...

Derived terms

• balefully
• unbaleful

Translations

Middle English

Alternative forms

• balful, baluful, balefulle, balefule, balleful, balefull, balful, balfulle

Etymology

From Old English bealuful; equivalent to bale +? -ful.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?ba?lful/, /?balful/

Adjective

baleful

1. evil, horrible, malicious
2. (rare) dangerous, harmful, injurious
3. (rare) worthless, petty, lowly

Derived terms

• balfulli

Descendants

• English: baleful

References

• “b?leful, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-05-19.