bane

noun

1. a person or thing that ruins or spoils: Gambling was the bane of his existence.
2. a deadly poison (often used in combination, as in the names of poisonous plants): wolfsbane; henbane.
3. death; destruction; ruin.
4. Obsolete. that which causes death or destroys life: entrapped and drowned beneath the watery bane.

noun

1. a person or thing that causes misery or distress (esp in the phrase bane of one’s life)
2. something that causes death or destruction
3. 1. a fatal poison
   2. (in combination)ratsbane
4. archaic ruin or distress

noun

1. a Scot word for bone

n.

Old English bana “killer, slayer, murderer; the devil,” from Proto-Germanic *banon, cognate with *banja- “wound” (cf. Old Frisian bona “murderer,” Old Norse bani, Old High German bana “murder,” Old English benn “wound,” Gothic banja “stroke, wound”), from PIE root *gwhen- “to strike, kill, wound” (cf. Avestan banta “ill”). Modern sense of “that which causes ruin or woe” is from 1570s.