I'm reading a post at Instapundit:
MORE DOWNSIDES OF OUR FECKLESS RULING CLASS: Get Ready: A Baleful Consequence of Inflation You’ve Heard Too Little About.I don't blog about economics, and not because I don't think it's important. I just think I have nothing worthy to contribute. I do, however blog about language, even when it's not important. In this case, I have the usage question: Should that be "baleful" or "baneful"? Are we talking about a "baleful consequence of inflation" or a "baneful consequence of inflation"?
The bale of baleful comes from Old English bealu ("evil"), and the bane of the similar-looking baneful comes from Old English bana ("slayer" or "murderer"). Baleful and baneful are alike in meaning as well as appearance, and they are sometimes used in quite similar contexts—but they usually differ in emphasis. Baleful typically describes what threatens or portends evil (e.g., "a baleful look," "baleful predictions"). Baneful applies typically to what causes evil or destruction (e.g., "a baneful secret," "the baneful bite of the serpent"). Both words are used to modify terms like influence, effect, and result, and in such uses there is little that distinguishes them.
If you've come this far, I suspect you'll conclude that it's not worth understanding the difference. The words aren't different enough for you ever to make an embarrassing or confusing mistake, and so few people even think about the difference that you have little hope of conveying a shade of meaning by choosing "baleful" over "baneful" or "baneful" over "baleful."
I've kept it in my head for over 50 years that there's a distinction here that you need to stop and think about before using either word, but at this point I'm about to conclude that I've been wasting my time. I mean, I was not even remembering the distinction, only remembering that there is a distinction and believing that I need to look it up every time.
Now, the OED says that there's an archaic meaning of "baleful" — "Unhappy, wretched, miserable; distressed, sorrowful, mournful." That's the idea I'd more or less remembered.
But the non-archaic meaning of "baleful" is "Full of malign, deadly, or noxious influence; pernicious, destructive, noxious, injurious, mischievous, malignant."
And "baneful" means "Destructive to well-being, pernicious, injurious":1579 E. Spenser Shepheardes Cal. Aug. 173 Helpe me ye banefull byrds.Thus, anyone using "baleful" interchangeably with "baneful" is on more solid ground than I would be if I insisted that there needed to be the subjective human emotion of sadness.
So, sadly, I am letting go of the baleful/baneful distinction. After 50 years, I lay down this burden.
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39 comments:
i'd always thought that baleful was the was the condition of the hayloft, once you'd done the work of throwing* all that hay up there?
work of throwing* if you didn't stretch or weren't in good condition, that work could be very baneful!
you need to stop and think about
Stop to think about
When Christian Bale played Batman, Tom Hardy played Bane. Comic book movies are both baleful and baneful.
There's the common daisy fleabane (wildflower), that presumably is not portending evil but merely poison.
Why nibble around the edges? We’re fucked.
Grandiose women have some interest in the relationship, however distorted that interest may be. Grandiose men don't, or whatever real interest they have is quickly exhausted.
After 50 years, I lay down this burden.
The baleful passage of time led to the baneful realization that her effort for distinction was too burdensome.
Hilarious post. At least to me, as someone who, once upon a time, studied English grammar with an eager appetite and continued to edit in my mind, business correspondences for years until they turned into emails with emojis and three-letter anagrams for phrases I did not know. I found myself looking up the anagrams and moving away from paying attention to grammar. Plus, it's the 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' effect for most of us grammar sticklers. Over the years I tried to keep on it for myself if for no one else, but I found myself getting slack on my own writing a long time ago.
So now I gladly make these grammar mistakes and think, Hell...I'm just like everyone else. No one cares. It's not even taught any longer. Except for when I post something on Althouse. Then, I'll give my writing a glance, before my finger hits 'publish your comment'. Sometimes I see my mistakes as it's going off to comment. Other times I won't see it until it's already up there. I know my grammar or typing mistakes bother me more than anyone else. But I suspect it never gets missed by the Professor of Law who could have been a Professor of English.
And there's this: "I don't blog about economics, and not because I don't think it's important. I just think I have nothing worthy to contribute." Hell, the entire comment section that we all spend so much time taking part in is filled with that sort of stuff. We do it anyway. It's good grammar practice.
Embrace the power of "and."
That happened to me with respect to the phrase "begs the question". I pushed back against using it to mean "raises the question", but then when I saw WF Buckley say that usage was fine, I threw in the towel.
We're here for you, Prof.
Don't get me started on infer/imply. Lucked out vs. lucked in. "I couldn't care less" vs. "I could care less."
"blenked on his blode."
Man, I can't even tell you how many times I've done that to myself.
Here I was hoping that you'd go full Nero Wolfe on us and burn the dictionary for saying they were interchangeable. I have no idea how one would go about burning a digital dictionary.
What? No stare decisis? Good for you, Althouse. 50 years is a long time to hold an opinion and change it.
Interestingly, as I read further, I seemed to see the distinction very clearly. I've heard both terms but never used them. I wasn't even aware "baleful" had a negative connotation, because "bale" has an entirely different meaning which I applied incorrectly to "baleful". My reading is something like "A gathering of consequences due to inflation" rather than the "menacing consequences of inflation". "Bane" and "Baneful" are similar with the latter modifying the former. I would have thought "A baneful consequences of inflation" to be correct. Finally, as "baneful" seems more active than "baleful"; I would also think "baneful" is appropriate for that reason. Inflation is slaying us.
I suspect "bane" has taken over and will render "bale" redundant and obsolete...because of fiction, video games, comics, and films.
Bane Capital - private equity
Bane of DC comics (versus Batman)
"Bane of my existence" -- 34 examples
https://quotestats.com/topic/bane-of-my-existence-quotes/
Recall how "ingenious" died to be replaced by "genius" in about 5 years due to Apple store "Genius Bars".
hiden, the magic word is hidden
irony
Iman said...
Why nibble around the edges? We’re fucked.
There will be short term pain.
But Democrats will not get elected in a fair election for a generation.
And their fake Republican simps like Mitt Romney are too obvious to win primaries without election fraud.
The entire establishment has been outed as corrupt and evil. They have had to fall back on lies and censorship and lack of transparency.
The Regime is finished and it wont take all that long for Trump to fix it in 2025. Energy independence will return us back to the 2019 norm that everyone experienced before the great resetters did their thing.
TIL baneful is a word. Nice that this can happen after so many years. Or maybe I've read it or heard it, and failed to install it in my vocabulary.
If you're going to parse damage via word use, devastate/decimate should still be a starting point for often incorrect usages. Our current inflation is going to do more than decimate our economy, it is going to devastate it. Thanks, Dementia Joe!
I don't think we always need to be conscious of varying shades of meanings embedded in words for them to affect, at least a little bit, how we feel what's being said. While etymologies can take you in new directions, I often find they just reinforce my sense of what the word implies beyond its denotation. A Dylan tangent to this is my recent discovery of "Murder Most Foul" and wondering whether people of the future will have any chance of fully apprehending all the allusive call outs to the culture we've been living in. I wonder if those shades of meaning will fade faster than etymologies.
"Baneful" gets much of its power from "bane," which (as someone above remarks) means roughly "poison." Cf. "henbane" and many other similar names for toxic herbs. In Harry Potter, there is the "wolfsbane potion" Snape makes up for Lupin. Legolas in Lord of the Rings (Part 1) calls a Balrog an "elf-bane." And so forth.
I have seen "baleful" applied mostly to facial expressions. I wouldn't use the two words synonymously.
Interesting post. Without ever having looked it up, a baleful look always had a sense to me of abashed, shy, even a bit ashamed. I've never gotten any flavor of evil or threatening when I've seen the word used. Clearly, I missed the bana-na boat.
- Krumhorn
Next comes the innocent semicolon.
WikiDiff : "As adjectives the difference between baleful and baneful is that baleful is portending evil; ominous while baneful is exceedingly harmful; causing harm, death, ruin."
The first time I remember reading the word "baleful" from the Alcoholics Anonymous I associated the word "baleful" with harmful.
From 12&12 Step Three, p.38: "But dependence upon an A.A. group or upon a Higher Power hasn't produced any baleful results."
In other words, dependence upon an A.A. group or upon a Higher Power hasn't produced any potentially harmful results.
The 12&12 uses the word 'baleful' correctly because I know for a fact, people who been sober in AA for years have "gone out" and relapsed. And that is because, to quote from the Big Book Into Action, p.85 : "What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition."
So maybe what the writer meant to say is we are drunk on Biden's Fed printing, but if we make the course corrections needed, and we start doing the right things economically, we can come out of a potentially much longer and much worse economic quagmire.
Not too concerned about the difference -- don't use either word much.
But this is a bit odd: "I've kept it in my head for over 50 years ...." Really, where? Not quite the same as "kept it in mind ...," which being less physical seems preferable.
let me put it this way :
was Trump baleful or baneful or benign on J6
is J6 committee baleful or baneful
let me put it this way :
was Trump baleful or baneful or benign on J6
is J6 committee baleful or baneful
Baneful is consequence of being acted upon; baleful is the condition of he who acts on you. By a hair.
Achilles said...
But Democrats will not get elected in a fair election for a generation.
THIS? This is supposed to make us feel better?
Have you considered the fact that...
But Democrats will not allow a fair election for a generation.
???
We don't Even live in a fascist dictatorship.. We live in a Banana Republic (That Grows Sh*tty Bananas)
Bane and baneful, both seldom heard these days but nevertheless useful for rhymes, as in Macbeth's famous Act V, scene iii couplet:
I will not be afraid of death and bane,
Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.
Baleful offers a possible Quaestor quip:
Ali toppled Liston in the sixth with a baleful haymaker.
Baleful: Don't make me pull this car over.
Baneful: What we are since dad pulled the car over.
A phrase I devised and used for years in debate with others: Far from a bane, it's a boon.
Or, the converse: Far from a boon, it's a bane.
Bravo. Thank you for that.
>>Legolas in Lord of the Rings (Part 1) calls a Balrog an "elf-bane."
If you're going to bring up LOTR in this context, how can you not cite "Isildur's Bane," i.e., the "One ring to rule them all/One ring to find them/One ring to bring them all/And in the darkness bind them. In the land of Mordor, where the Shadow lies" (hope I got that right from memory).
I don't recall the remark by Legolas, but wasn't the Balrog more o a dwarf's bane? It wiped out/drove out all of the dwarves in Moria.
--gpm
"When Christian Bale played Batman, Tom Hardy played Bane. Comic book movies are both baleful and baneful."
and banal.
"blenked on his blode."
Yeah, I loved that. I looked up the verb "to blenk" in the OED.
It has a lot of meanings: To blind, deceive, cheat... To start aside, so as to elude anything; to flinch, swerve... To turn aside, raise (the eyes, eyebrows).... To cheat, disappoint, disconcert, bilk... To make pale, to blanch.... To shine, glitter, gleam.... To glance, cast a glance, give a look; to look up (from sleep);
I guess the bird was glancing at his blood. I did consider whether the bird was making the blood pale by bird-shitting into it, whitening it.
Anyway, we're told that it's "partly the earlier equivalent of modern blink." Partly!
"Bane" comes up a lot in the phrase "bane of our existence."
And in early June, Biden said: “Inflation is the bane of our existence."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/biden-frustration-soaring-gas-prices/
here is my attempt
So may be Joe Rogan is concerned about 'baneful' [in his view] influence of Trump and is being baleful [in my view] about it?
I never say baleful or baleful. I do try to work "sanguine" into my conversation whenever possible. It means either bloody (in the "Saw IV" sense of the word) or cheerful. Another favorite is "fulsome," which used to mean disgusting but sounds like it should mean large (in the Russ Meyers' Super Vixens" sense), so that's what it means now. I suggest going forward we should all be substituting sanguine for baneful and fulsome for baleful.
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