bestial

comparative more bestial · superlative most bestial

1. figurativelyliterallyBeast-like.

   His was a bestial face, a face that bore the stamp of Nature's eternal injustice.

   1900 April, Willa Cather, “Eric Hermannson's Soul”, in Cosmopolitan

   5 more examples

   Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.

   c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]

   By thee adulterous lust was driven from men / Among the bestial herds to range […]

   1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 753-4

   This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centered on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone.

   1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 118

   Ah, if the invincible forest god of that dead past were but with them now. No longer would there be aught to fear from prowling beasts, or from the bestial Russian.

   1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 177

   The Game of Thrones novels were best sellers without fleshed-out Dothraki; the languages in Star Wars, one of the most successful franchises ever, are mostly gibberish, even if Han Solo claims to understand Chewbacca’s bestial warbling.

   2022 December 31, Matteo Wong, “Hollywood’s Love Affair With Fictional Languages”, in The Atlantic

   Synonyms: animalian, beastly, animalesque, animalian, animalish, animalistic, animal-like, beastly

1. Scotlandobsoletepluralplural onlyCattle.

   […] much must depend upon the way in which bestial are bought or reared, and the state of the markets when they are sold.

   1845, The New Statistical Account of Scotland: Forfar, Kincardine, page 94