mid-14c., "full of hate;" late 14c., "exciting hate;" from hate (n.) + -ful. Related: Hatefully; hatefulness.
Entries linking to hateful
hate n.
Old English hete "hatred, spite, envy, malice, hostility," from Proto-Germanic *hatis- (source also of Old Norse hattr, Old Frisian hat, Dutch haat, Old High German has, German Hass, Gothic hatis; see hate (v.)). Altered in Middle English to conform with the verb.
Hate mail is first attested 1951. Hate crime is attested by 1988. Hate speech in modern use is attested by 1990. The term is found in a translation, published in 1898, of the Anglo-Saxon poem called "The Fall of the Angels," telling of Satan's revolt, where it renders Anglo-Saxon hetespraece:
Dear was he to our Lord; but it could not be hidden
That his angel began to be proud,
Lifted himself against his Leader, sought hate-speech,
Words of boasting against him, and would not serve God.
["Education," vol. xviii, No. 6, Feb. 1898]
-ful
word-forming element attached to nouns (and in modern English to verb stems) and meaning "full of, having, characterized by," also "amount or volume contained" (handful, bellyful); from Old English -full, -ful, which is full (adj.) become a suffix by being coalesced with a preceding noun, but originally a separate word. Cognate with German -voll, Old Norse -fullr, Danish -fuld. Most English -ful adjectives at one time or another had both passive ("full of x") and active ("causing x; full of occasion for x") senses.
It is rare in Old English and Middle English, where full was much more commonly attached at the head of a word (for example Old English fulbrecan "to violate," fulslean "to kill outright," fulripod "mature;" Middle English had ful-comen "attain (a state), realize (a truth)," ful-lasting "durability," ful-thriven "complete, perfect," etc.).