The DICT Development Group

  Fateful \Fate"ful\, a. .
     Having the power of serving or accomplishing fate. "The
     fateful steel." --J. Barlow.
     [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Significant of fate; ominous.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              The fateful cawings of the crow.      --Longfellow.
        -- Fate"ful*ly, adv.- Fate"ful*ness, n.
        [1913 Webster]

  fateful
      adj 1: having momentous consequences; of decisive importance;
             "that fateful meeting of the U.N. when...it declared war
             on North Korea"- Saturday Rev; "the fatal day of the
             election finally arrived" [syn: fateful, fatal]
      2: ominously prophetic [syn: fateful, foreboding(a),
         portentous]
      3: (of events) having extremely unfortunate or dire
         consequences; bringing ruin; "the stock market crashed on
         Black Friday"; "a calamitous defeat"; "the battle was a
         disastrous end to a disastrous campaign"; "such doctrines, if
         true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory"- Charles
         Darwin; "it is fatal to enter any war without the will to win
         it"- Douglas MacArthur; "a fateful error" [syn: black,
         calamitous, disastrous, fatal, fateful]
      4: controlled or decreed by fate; predetermined; "a fatal series
         of events" [syn: fatal, fateful]

  126 Moby Thesaurus words for "fateful":
     acute, apocalyptic, appointed, awe-inspiring, bad, baleful,
     baneful, black, bodeful, boding, calamitous, cataclysmal,
     cataclysmic, catastrophic, certain, conclusive, consequential,
     consuming, consumptive, critical, crucial, dark, deadly, decisive,
     demolishing, demolitionary, depredatory, desolating, destined,
     destroying, destructive, determinative, devastating, devoted, dire,
     direful, disastrous, doomed, doomful, dreary, earnest, evil,
     evil-starred, fatal, fated, foreboding, foredoomed, formidable,
     fratricidal, gloomy, grave, heavy, ill, ill-boding, ill-fated,
     ill-omened, ill-starred, important, imposing, in store,
     in the cards, inauspicious, indefeasible, ineluctable, inescapable,
     inevasible, inevitable, inexorable, inflexible, internecine,
     irresistible, irrevocable, lethal, lowering, major, marked,
     menacing, momentous, necessary, nihilist, nihilistic,
     of evil portent, ominous, ordained, pivotal, portending,
     portentous, ravaging, relentless, resistless, ruining, ruinous,
     self-destructive, serious, significant, sinister, sober, solemn,
     somber, subversionary, subversive, suicidal, sure, sure as death,
     sure as fate, threatening, unavoidable, uncontrollable,
     undeflectable, unfavorable, unfortunate, unlucky, unpreventable,
     unpromising, unpropitious, unstoppable, untoward, unyielding,
     vandalic, vandalish, vandalistic, wasteful, wasting, weighty,
     withering, written