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say it: BAYL-fuhl
baleful is an adjective meaning "deadly or sinister". It carries 2 recorded senses.
threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments
“a baleful look”
“forbidding thunderclouds”
“his tone became menacing”
“ominous rumblings of discontent”
“sinister storm clouds”
“a sinister smile”
“his threatening behavior”
“ugly black clouds”
“the situation became ugly”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for baleful come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.