deathfuladj.

a1250 Lofsong Lefdi (Nero) in R. Morris Old Eng. Homilies (1868) 1st Ser. 207 (MED) Ich bide þe..bi his deaðfule grure and bi his blodie swote.

a1586 Sir P. Sidney Arcadia (1590) ii. iii. sig. P5 Many deathfull torments.

1617 S. Collins Epphata to F. T. ii. ix. 362 As Homer saies of the champions in their deathfull combat.

1621 G. Sandys tr. Ovid First Five Bks. Metamorphosis ii. 31 The deathfull Scorpion's far-out-bending claws.

1726 E. Fenton in A. Pope et al. tr. Homer Odyssey IV. xix. 631 Each fav'rite fowl he pounc'd with deathful sway.

1747 W. Collins Odes 20 Amidst the deathful Field.

1810 L. Aikin Epist. Women 23 With new-born courage face The howling horrors of the deathful chase.

1850 J. S. Blackie tr. Æschylus Lyrical Dramas I. 154 The man, that dealt the deathful blow.

1878 P. Bayne Chief Actors Puritan Revol. viii. 340 Man under sinful and deathful conditions.

1911 J. A. Thomson Biol. Seasons iv. 368 There are life-sparing and deathful occupations and habits.

1922 E. E. Cummings Enormous Room iv. 59 I felt a renewed interest in living as soon as the deathful swallow descended to my abdomen, very much as a suicide who changes his mind after the fatal dose.

1996 K. Redfield Jamison Unquiet Mind (1997) 210 The ominous, dark, and deathful quality that I felt as a young child watching the high clear skies fill with smoke and flames.

1483 tr. Adam of Eynsham Reuelation xxvii Trewly he..sofryd ful greuys peynys sum tyme in fyre and sum tyme in stinkyng bathys of brimston & pyche medild to gedyr hoys face and there was ouer wrechyd & dedful [L. exsanguis].

a1586 Sir P. Sidney Arcadia (1593) ii. f. 55 With a deathfull shutting off his eyes hee fell downe at her bedside.

1684 S. Trigg Most Strange & Terrible Astrological Predict. 3 Somners, Pettifoggers, and swinging Evidences, whose Faces are combust, fiery, deathful, and inflamed with the Juyce of Barley.

1788 P. Stockdale Ximenes v. iv. 118 A deathful chillness, too, creeps through my heart!

1803 J. Porter Thaddeus of Warsaw I. vi. 157 The deathful hue of his countenance.

1850 E. B. Browning Vision of Poets xcii Deathful their faces were.

1881 W. Wilkins Songs of Study 97 Her..white body spotted o'er With deathful green.

1908 Overland Monthly July 45 A deathful silence save the dirge of th' wailing wind's last sigh.

1975 A. Sinclair Dylan Thomas xvi. 214 Disgusted by the city or foreign parts, he yearned for the deathful peace of Wales.

2009 N. Hambidge Inorganic i. viii. 42 The sinister noise..gave the feel that an imprecation had been conjured to become something from a deathful state.

?1624 G. Chapman tr. Hymn to Venus in tr. Crowne Homers Wks. 99 That with a Deathlesse Goddesse lay A deathfull Man.

1857 J. Brown Analyt. Expos. Epist. Paul the Apostle to Romans ii. iv. 173 ‘The body of this death’, may, with equal propriety, be rendered, ‘this body of death’;—this body of death being equivalent to this deathful body.

1887 W. Morris tr. Homer Odyssey I. iii. 32 Unto deathful men on the corn-kind earth that dwell.

1921 F. F. Shannon Econ. Eden v. 96 In a flash they escape from deathful clods into deathless glory!

1958 E. E. Cummings 95 Poems cxiv Do lovers suffer? all divinities proudly descending put on deathful flesh.

1761 Andromache to Pyrrhus 13 Thus deathfully array'd! thou gav'st the war.

1809 T. Campbell Gertrude of Wyoming i. xvi Deathfully their thunders seem'd to sweep.

1810 W. Scott Lady of Lake iv. 178 She was bleeding deathfully.

1873 W. Cory Lett. & Jrnls. (1897) 311 The muezzin sang the prayers dismally, deathfully, lunatically.

1902 A. F. Brown In Days of Giants xi. 171 He raised Miōnir to smite the giant deathfully.

2002 CMJ New Music Rep. 2 Sept. 27/1 Fear Factory was a deathfully delicious band that was more brutal than a full-scale riot at a British soccer game.

a1617 R. Kilby Hallelv-iah (1618) 50 I haue great need to pray euery houre, because of the hardnesse of mine heart, and deathfulnesse of my bodie.

1656 Disc. Auxiliary Beauty 70 To adorn our lookes, so as may be most remote from a deathfulnesse.

1818 H. H. Milman Samor vi. 163 The clust'ring curls that veil'd The rigid deathfulness of that fair brow.

1852 F. W. Robertson Two Lect. Working Classes i. 20 There is nothing to break the deep deathfulness of the scene.

1993 Church Times 17 Sept. 23/2 When he [sc. Tom Stoppard] borrowed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Shakespeare it was to articulate for us the deathfulness of death.