Thesaurus
baleful
adjective
Synonyms and Antonyms of BALEFUL
1
being or showing a sign of evil or calamity to come <a dark, baleful sky portending a tornado>
Synonyms baleful, dire, direful, doomy, foreboding, ill, ill-boding, inauspicious, menacing, minatory, portentous, sinister, threatening
Related Words black, bleak, cheerless, chill, Cimmerian, cloudy, cold, comfortless, dark, darkening, depressing, depressive, desolate, dim, disconsolate, dismal, drear, dreary, dreich [chiefly Scottish], elegiac (also elegiacal), forlorn, funereal, gloomy, glum, godforsaken, gray (also grey), lonely, lonesome, lugubrious, miserable, morbid, morose, murky, plutonian, saturnine, sepulchral, somber (or sombre), sullen, sunless, tenebrific, tenebrous, wretched; discouraging, disheartening, hopeless, unfavorable, unpromising, unpropitious; ill-fated, ill-starred, star-crossed, troubled, unfortunate, unlucky; evil, malign, malignant
Near Antonyms auspicious, benign, bright, encouraging, favorable, golden, heartening, hopeful, promising, propitious, prosperous
Antonyms unthreatening
2
causing or capable of causing harm <contends that the violent content of so much of popular entertainment is a baleful influence on our society>
Synonyms adverse, bad, baleful, baneful, damaging, dangerous, deleterious, detrimental, evil, hurtful, ill, injurious, mischievous, nocuous, noxious, pernicious, prejudicial, wicked
Related Words hostile, inimical, unfriendly; contagious, deadly, infectious, infective, pestiferous, pestilent, pestilential, poisonous, venomous; insidious, menacing, ominous, sinister, threatening; hazardous, imperiling (or imperilling), jeopardizing, parlous, perilous, risky, unsafe, unsound; nasty, noisome, unhealthful, unhealthy, unwholesome; destructive, fatal, killer, lethal, malignant, ruinous
Near Antonyms advantageous, beneficial, useful; favorable, good, propitious; curative, healthful, healthy, helpful, palliative, remedial, salubrious, salutary, wholesome; secure, sound; benignant; noncorrosive, nondestructive, nonfatal, noninfectious, nonlethal, nonpoisonous, nonpolluting, nontoxic, nonvenomous
3
likely to cause or capable of causing death <a medicine that is beneficial in small doses but baleful in large>
Synonyms baleful, deathly, fatal, fell, killer, lethal, mortal, murderous, pestilent, terminal, vital
Related Words baneful, deleterious, destructive, harmful, injurious, noxious, pernicious, truculent; infectious, infective, pestilential, poisonous, sublethal, toxic, virulent; dangerous, grave, grievous, hazardous, jeopardizing, menacing, parlous, perilous, risky, serious, threatening, ugly, unhealthy, unsound; bloody, internecine, sanguinary, sanguine
Near Antonyms beneficial, restorative, salubrious, salutary; alleviative, corrective, curative, remedial, tonic; advantageous, beneficial, useful; nonpoisonous, nontoxic, safe
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