baleful

1 being or showing a sign of evil or calamity to come a dark, baleful sky portending a tornado Synonyms ominous, dire, direful, doomy, foreboding, ill, ill-boding, inauspicious, menacing, minatory, portentous, sinister, threateningRelated 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, malignantNear Antonyms auspicious, benign, bright, encouraging, favorable, golden, heartening, hopeful, promising, propitious, prosperousAntonyms 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, harmful, baneful, damaging, dangerous, deleterious, detrimental, evil, hurtful, ill, injurious, mischievous, nocuous, noxious, pernicious, prejudicial, wickedRelated 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, ruinousNear 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, nonvenomousAntonyms anodyne, benign, harmless, hurtless, innocent, innocuous, inoffensive, safe

3 likely to cause or capable of causing death a medicine that is beneficial in small doses but baleful in large Synonyms deadly, deathly, fatal, fell, killer, lethal, mortal, murderous, pestilent, terminal, vitalRelated 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, sanguineNear Antonyms beneficial, restorative, salubrious, salutary; alleviative, corrective, curative, remedial, tonic; advantageous, beneficial, useful; nonpoisonous, nontoxic, safeAntonyms healthful, healthy, nonfatal, nonlethal, wholesome