Definition of Baleful
baleful (adjective) - deadly or sinister
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How can baleful be used in a sentence?
The fighting had ended, but its baleful, destructive legacy lingered on.
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nullIt matters that his love for Lucy Mercer drove Eleanor Roosevelt to baleful despair.
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nullMore learned folk tell me that it evokes Edgar and Edmund's baleful feud in King Lear.
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nullThe House vote's most baleful effects may be on Turkey's relations with Armenia itself.
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nullWBYL = 'baleful' it's not true that 'the baleful Jewish (thing)' has no meaning in Arabic.
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nullWar is hell, as everyone claims to know, but here's a baleful new perspective on the subject.
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nullHe cast the men a baleful look and they all retreated without another word, their faces paling.
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nullWhen they parted it was dusk, and the first stars were rising, winking into existence like baleful eyes.
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nullMr. Vincent wonders why the "baleful history" of federal price controls is not persuasive to the White House?
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nullOld wood gleamed, and trophy heads of various kinds of wildlife stared down at them with baleful, glassy eyes.
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nullTheir rush to dishonest exploitation of the Newsweek/Princeton poll is a baleful example of where they've gone.
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nullThat context of course is Jim Crow segregation that dominated the South and also exerted its baleful influence in the North.
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nullGordon's unblinking left eye glinted under the baleful sodium roadlights, hanging like spectres over the central reservation.
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nullOne of them turns to me with what appears to be a baleful look, or perhaps it is just the play of shadow on the ravages of age.
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nullIt will give you a baleful look, shove past you into your kitchen and start to make a cup of tea in a chipped Royal Wedding mug.
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nullA baleful light was in his eyes, and to his brother he seemed for all the world like a cornered rat, desperate and ready to fight.
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nullNow, as that government turns its baleful attention to the ethnic Tamils it is holding behind razor wire, will we turn a blind eye?
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nullUnder the baleful gaze of the rest of the UK, Hendy and Johnson are herding billions of pounds worth of projects into a no-cuts zone.
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nullTheir baleful presence will haunt the markets for months, especially when its collective mind is short of other things to think about.
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nullThe iron-braced door turned on its hinge when his hands touched it ... while a baleful light, flame more than light, flared from his eyes.
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nullEurope's endless debt problems continue to have a baleful impact on stock-market sentiment across a nervously interconnected financial world.
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nullAlso, nuclear deterrence has exists within a framework of inter-state relations and is underwritten by the baleful certainty of mutually assured destruction.
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nullIn many cases this can lead to information being taken out of context, or shared beyond appropriate boundaries, with baleful (and other, still unknown) consequences.
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nullThe Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Weekly Standard; despite his having authored five books of non-fiction; and despite the word "baleful" having appeared in print
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nullBut when you see ministers from this government and talk baleful influences with them, they scratch their heads and produce other threats that traditional Rupert-loathers don't mention.
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nullWhen you were doing searches, did you look for instances where Cashill had used 'baleful'? because I find it hard to believe he really didn't know that word until Obama taught it to him.
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nullJoy Wilkinson's Acting Leader presents a baleful Margaret Beckett, almost forgotten as a contender for the Labour party leadership, though reputed to be one of the hardest interviewees to crack.
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nullMr. Soderbergh, directing from a script by Lem Dobbs, did his own cinematography, which is richly understated when the colors aren't morphing into interludes of grainy black-and-white or baleful ocher.
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nullAnd when Satan's eyes are called "baleful," the word, besides indicating the "huge affliction and dismay" that he feels, gives a hint of the woes that are in store for the victims on whom those eyes have not yet lit.
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nullThe Great Sea, the Broad Sea, the Boundless Sea; the Ethiopians, "dwelling far away, the most distant of men," and the Cimmerians, "covered with darkness and cloud," where "baleful night is spread over timid mortals."
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nullAs with his wallowing memoir "The Discomfort Zone" (2007), the last 300 pages of "Freedom" become bogged down with tendentious speechmaking and baleful overanalysis of every mean thought that enters his characters 'heads.
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nullIn a Liddle thread, we have been debating which of the ideology of Islam and an outward visible sign of it, namely the burka, should be the better focus of attempts to rid our culture of the baleful threat of Islamofascism.
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nullCo-scripted and directed by the British brothers Howard and Jon Ford the former producing, the latter acting as cinematographer, this relatively orthodox horror flick is given a singular baleful vitality by being filmed in disturbed war-torn west Africa.
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nullFor too long now -- and with baleful results -- the need for national security has been allowed to override everything else, inflicting grave damage on our claims to be a civilized country, and leading to devastating effects for those caught up in a "War on Terror" with few checks and balances.
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nullThe leading commodity currency spent much of September on the ropes, not due to anything much that was happening in its home country, but rather because the investment community was fretting about the euro zone's debt crisis, and the possible baleful effects on world growth if it can't be resolved soon.
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nullAs for the "extended director's cut" of Joe Johnston's troubled remake of The Wolfman (2010, Universal, 15), despite the inherently lupine attributes of Benicio del Toro, the nostalgic make-up effects (accidentally?) recall Michael J Fox hitting puberty in Teen Wolf and Jack Nicholson trampolining his way through the baleful Wolf.
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nullIf I do not succeed in getting Dionea this place (and all your Excellency's illustriousness and all my poor eloquence will be needed to counteract the sinister reports attaching to our poor little waif), it will be best to accept your suggestion of taking the girl into your household at Rome, since you are curious to see what you call our baleful beauty.
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nullIt's a one-book explanation for the current move to the left in a growing number of Latin American countries, tracing a centuries-long history of rapine and plunder, of genocide and dictatorship, first at the hands of Spain, and more recently under the baleful influence of the US, which operated directly or by proxy to ensure that nothing would ever change.
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nullAt pet shops, when I had a little money saved up, I bought exotic species like the beautiful Diamondback Terrapin from the mid-Atlantic states, Indian flap-shelled and Ganges softshell turtles that lacked a hard carapace, and sidenecked water turtles from Central and South America, species that pulled their heads in crookedly rather than straight, the better to keep tabs on its environment with a single, baleful eye.
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Tips for Using baleful in a Sentence
You may have an easier time writing sentences with baleful if you know what words are likely to come before or after it, or simply what words are often found in the same sentence.
Frequent Predecessors
Words that often come before baleful in sentences. For example: "the baleful" or "a baleful"
- the
- a
- its
- and
- his
- their
- with
- this
- of
- that
Frequent Successors
Words that often come after baleful in sentences. For example: "baleful influence" or "baleful effects"
- influence
- effects
- eyes
- eye
- and
- look
- glare
- .
- light
- influences
Associated Words
Words that aren't necessarily predecessors or successors, but are often found in the same sentence.
- gaze
- influence
- influences
- eyes
- effects
- black
Alternate Definitions
- baleful (adjective) - threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments
- baleful (adjective) - full of deadly or pernicious influence; destructive
- baleful (adjective) - full of grief or sorrow; woeful; sad