Asymptotic stability and boundedness have been two of most popular topics in the study of stochastic functional differential equations (SFDEs) (see e.g. Appleby and Reynolds (2008), Appleby and Rodkina (2009), Basin and Rodkina (2008), Khasminskii (1980), Mao (1995), Mao (1997), Mao (2007), Rodkina and Basin (2007), Shu, Lam, and Xu (2009), Yang, Gao, Lam, and Shi (2009), Yuan and Lygeros (2005) and Yuan and Lygeros (2006)). In general, the existing results on asymptotic stability and boundedness of SFDEs require (i) the coefficients of the SFDEs obey the local Lipschitz condition and the linear growth condition; (ii) the diffusion operator of the SFDEs acting on a C-2,C-1-function be bounded by a polynomial with the same order as the C-2,C-1-function. However, there are many SFDEs which do not obey the linear growth condition. Moreover, for such highly nonlinear SFDEs, the diffusion operator acting on a C-2,C-1-function is generally bounded by a polynomial with a higher order than the C-2,C-1-function. Hence the existing criteria on stability and boundedness for SFDEs are not applicable and we see the necessity to develop new criteria. Our main aim in this paper is to establish new criteria where the linear growth condition is no longer needed while the up-bound for the diffusion operator may take a much more general form. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.