beastly
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle English beestly, bestely, beastelich, equivalent to beast + -ly. Compare West Frisian bistachtich (“beastly”), Dutch beestachtig (“beastly”), German biestig (“beastly”).
Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]beastly (comparative beastlier or more beastly, superlative beastliest or most beastly) (chiefly UK)
- Pertaining to, or having the form, nature, or habits of, a beast.
- Similar to the nature of a beast; contrary to the nature and dignity of human beings.
- (UK, dated) Abominable; very unpleasant; hideous.
- beastly weather
- Stop being so beastly to her!
- 1904, Edith Nesbit, The New Treasure Seekers, Chapter 1:
- And all the time, whenever we went to the Cedars, there was all sorts of silly fuss going on about the beastly wedding; boxes coming from London with hats and jackets in, and wedding presents—all glassy and silvery, or else brooches and chains—and clothes sent down from London to choose from.
- 1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 165:
- "If you saw the care she takes over hoisting her beastly old carcass up and down those stairs, you could make a sure bet against her having another accident there."
- (slang) Of computer hardware or motor vehicles etc.: ostentatiously powerful.
- 2010 January 11, Matthew DeCarlo, “Silverstone mini-ITX case can fit Radeon HD 5970”, in TechSpot:
- In addition to a Core i7-860 with a full-sized heatsink and 4GB of DDR3 RAM, the company showed its SUGO SG07 housing today's most beastly graphics card, the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970, which is about 30cm long.
- 2014, March 21, Tycho de Feijter, “Hummer H2 is a Big Black Beast in the Rain in China”, CarNewsChina.com:
- A very big, very black, and very beastly Hummer H2, Spotted in China in in the rain the great city of Zigong in Sichuan Province.
- 2018 October 16, Chris Smith, “Huawei just unveiled the most beastly Android phone the world has ever seen”, in BGR:
- Huawei’s Mate 20 phones have instantly become the best iPhone XS rivals out there, at least on paper, and the high-end model is easily the most beastly Android phone the world has seen so far.
Usage notes
[edit]Most often used pejoratively, but sense 4 has predominantly positive connotations. Bestial is more narrow, though also often used pejoratively.
Synonyms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]pertaining to, or having the form, nature, or habits of a beast
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characterizing the nature of a beast; brutal; filthy
abominable
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Adverb
[edit]beastly (comparative more beastly, superlative most beastly)
- Like a beast; brutishly.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- Beastly he threwe her downe, ne car'd to spill / Her garments gay with scales of fish that all did fill.
- 1901, The Literary World, volume 63, page 35:
- They have insulted me most beastly. Moreover, they are, everyone of them, black-satan filthmen.
- 1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita:
- The baths were mostly tiled showers, with an endless variety of spouting mechanisms, but with one definitely non-Laodicean characteristic in common, a propensity, while in use, to turn instantly beastly hot or blindingly cold upon you, depending on whether your neighbor turned on his cold or his hot to deprive you of a necessary complement in the shower you had so carefully blended.
Anagrams
[edit]Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms suffixed with -ly (adjectival)
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/iːstli
- Rhymes:English/iːstli/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- British English
- English terms with collocations
- English dated terms
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations
- English slang
- English adverbs