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Beast   /bist/   Listen
noun
Beast  n.  
1.
Any living creature; an animal; including man, insects, etc. (Obs.)
2.
Any four-footed animal, that may be used for labor, food, or sport; as, a beast of burden. "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast."
3.
Any animal other than a human; opposed to man. "'Tain't a fit night out for man nor beast."
4.
Fig.: A coarse, brutal, filthy, or degraded fellow.
5.
A game at cards similar to loo. (Obs.)
6.
A penalty at beast, omber, etc. Hence: To be beasted, to be beaten at beast, omber, etc.
Beast royal, the lion. (Obs.)
Synonyms: Beast, Brute. When we use these words in a figurative sense, as applicable to human beings, we think of beasts as mere animals governed by animal appetite; and of brutes as being destitute of reason or moral feeling, and governed by unrestrained passion. Hence we speak of beastly appetites; beastly indulgences, etc.; and of brutal manners; brutal inhumanity; brutal ferocity. So, also, we say of a drunkard, that he first made himself a beast, and then treated his family like a brute.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Beast" Quotes from Famous Books



... old tin life-preserver hanging on a hook by the door; the surgeon climbed up to get it, and began buckling it about the old man in spite of his remonstrances. The timbers groaned and strained, the boat trembled like some great beast in its death-agony, settled heavily, and then the beams on one side of them parted. They stood on a shelving plank floor, snapped off two feet from them, the yellow sky overhead, and the breakers crunching their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... old man said. "Work for a theater long enough and you find that out. Part bloodhound, I said, and part water spaniel. Should have seen that dog before you start talking about impossibilities. What a strange-looking beast. And then there ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett

... subjected to many hardships of a peculiar nature, yet her position, compared with that of the man, is higher and freer than that of the white woman. Why will people look only on one side? They either exalt the Red man into a Demigod or degrade him into a beast. They say that he compels his wife to do all the drudgery, while he does nothing but hunt and amuse himself; forgetting that, upon his activity and power of endurance as a hunter, depends the support of his family; that this is labor of the most fatiguing kind, and ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... having accepted the Governorship of Madras, asked me to write to him regularly in India, which I promised to do, and did, and in thanking me he said that my opinions would have interest for him, since among other things I knew was "that strange wild beast—the House of Commons." This saying was pathetic from him, for there never was a man who more utterly failed to understand the House of Commons ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... whom you treat like a dog at a fair, never had a day's—no, nor an hour's—contact with goodness, purity, truth, or even human kindness; never had an opportunity of learning anything better. What right have you then to hunt him like a wild beast, and kick him and whip him, and fetter him and hang him by expensive complicated machinery, when you have done nothing to teach him any of the duties of ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins


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