Word.ws English Dictionary

beast

UK/biːst/

beast noun: any four-footed land mammal.

Noun

beast (plural beasts)

  1. Any four-footed land mammal.
    • Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat.1611, “Leviticus 11:3”, in King James Version
  2. (collective, often) All non-human animals seen as a group.
    • Language is what separates man and beast.
  3. A person who behaves in a violent, antisocial or uncivilized manner.
  4. (UK) A domestic animal, especially a bovine farm animal.
    • […] it always had the making of a fine beast about it, but up to the time I had it up here in a stall by itself it did not get the chance to make any headway [ie, fatten], all its mates were down on it and it never seemed to fill itself. […] A big framed beast takes a lot of food — expensive food...1908 September 21, “The fattening beast”, in Mark Lane Express Agricultural Journal, page 340
    • Boxer was an enormous beast, nearly eighteen hands high, and as strong as any two ordinary horses put together.1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC
  5. A monstrously unusual and dangerous animal.
    Synonyms:
    monster
  6. (slang) Anything regarded as larger or more powerful than one of its normal size or strength.
    • That is a beast of a stadium.
    • The subwoofer that comes with this set of speakers is a beast.
  7. (slang) Someone who is particularly impressive, especially athletically or physically.
  8. (derogatory, slang) A sex offender.
    • Shouts had been heard: 'We're coming to kill you, beasts.' In desperation, Rule 43s had tried to barricade their doors[…]1994, Elaine Player, Michael Jenkins, Prisons After Woolf: Reform Through Riot, page 190
    • For many prisoners and in many prisons, antipathy towards 'nonces' or 'beasts' is little more than an idea[…]1994, Adam Sampson, Acts of Abuse: Sex Offenders And the Criminal Justice System, page 83
  9. (figuratively) Something unpleasant and difficult.
    • […] Even unopposed, the natural obstacles are formidable, and defending his line of advance will be a beast of a problem."2000, Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon, Berkley, published 2001, →ISBN, page 905
    • He'd be in the hospital a few days — broken collarbone, a cast on his arm, a beast of a headache — but fine.2006, Heather Burt, Adam's Peak, Dundurn Press, published 2006, →ISBN, page 114
  10. A thing or matter, especially a difficult or unruly one.
    • Now, the nucleus of a heavy element is a very peculiar beast.2003, John Derbyshire, Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problems in Mathematics
    • 'Lucy Leave', also known as 'Lucy Lea in Blue Tights', is a stranger beast altogether. Musically it is as derivative as everything else the band was playing at this time2010, Rob Chapman, A Very Irregular Head: The Life of Syd Barrett, page 65

Verb

beast (third-person singular simple present beasts, present participle beasting, simple past and past participle beasted)

  1. (UK, transitive) To impose arduous exercise upon, either as training or as punishment.
    • Recalling his training experiences in the Army and now the Prison Service, this young male officer remarked: In the Army, to get beasted was to be given a lot of psychological pressure […]2013, Elaine M. Crawley, Doing Prison Work
  2. (UK, slang, transitive) To bully or harass.
    • The old school of prisoner who have seen it all when, now I don't mean this nastily, when they were beasted, and they did what they were told, there were no ifs or buts, nowadays there are questions, there are grey areas and we're more sympathetic […]2016, Natalie Mann, Doing Harder Time?, page 91
  3. (Scotland, slang, transitive) To engage in sexual intercourse with, particularly in an illicit context.
    • That teacher is under investigation for beasting wee 'uns.

Adjective

beast (comparative more beast, superlative most beast)

  1. (slang, chiefly Midwestern and Northeastern US) great; excellent; powerful
    • There is another type from Siemens which is the HYB 39S64XXX(AT/ATL) -8B version (notice the "B" and the end) which is totally beast altogether.1999, Jason Chue, “AMD K6-2 350mhz, FIC VA503+, LGS 64mb PC100 sdram”, in jaring.pcbase (Usenet)
    • Translation: a piece of crap, but the rest of the car was totally beast.2012, Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits, page 37

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Beast

the Beast

  1. A figure in the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse), often identified with Satan or the Antichrist.
    • The Number of the Beast Is 666 (13:16-18) John's vision concludes with the notorious reference to the "mark of the beast" and the number 666.2000, Robert H. Smith, Apocalypse: a commentary on Revelation in words and images, page 69
  2. A wild, or seemingly-wild, animal that roams free in a country where it is usually only found in zoos.
    • the Beast of Bodmin Moor
  3. (US, slang) A cadet's basic training at West Point.
    • Plebes spend their first summer at Cadet Basic Training — Beast Barracks — where they get soldierized.2014, David Lipsky, Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, page 8
    • I was able to keep up with the herd and evade the Beast. Cadet Basic Training ended with a rigorous twenty four-hour exercise that included a twelve-mile, rite-of-passage road march to West Point […]2019, Conrad Taylor, PATH to FREEDOM: My Story of Perseverance

Proper noun (2) capitalized: BEAST

BEAST

  1. (Internet, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS.

beast meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Telugu and Punjabi

beast in Hindi

non-human animal
वहश vahaś, जानवर jānvar, हैवान haivān, जंतु jantu, मृग mŕg
violent/antisocial person
पशु paśu

beast in Urdu

non-human animal
حَیوان haivān

beast in Telugu

non-human animal
జంతువు jantuvu, మృగము mr̥gamu
violent/antisocial person
పశువు paśuvu

beast in Punjabi

non-human animal
ਹੈਵਾਨ haivān, حَیوان ḥaivān
More languagesFewer languages
beast in Pashto
ژوي žoy, žuy
beast in Tagalog
halimaw
beast in Arabic
وَحْش waḥš, مُتَوَحِّش mutawaḥḥiš
beast in Indonesian
buas
Kashmiri
جانور jānōr

Examples of beast in a sentence

  • Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]’1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
  • But Wasting Light, recorded analog to tape (API 1608 32track, two Studer 827s) with no computers, not even to mix or master, is an entirely different beast.2012, Kylee Swenson Gordon, Electronic Musician Presents the Recording Secrets Behind 50 Great Albums:
  • Murder is a stranger beast than suicide, although the end result of both is the same.2017, Riley Sager, Final Girls, page 141:

All 40 example sentences with beast

Synonyms of beast

Forms of beast

Noun
pluralbeasts
alternative form (obsolete)beest
Verb
third-person singular presentbeasts
present participlebeasting
past participlebeasted
pastbeasted
Adjective
comparativemore beast
superlativemost beast

Plural of beast: beasts

Origin of beast

From Middle English beeste, beste, from Old French beste (French bête), from Latin bēstia (“animal, beast”); many cognates – see bēstia.

Words formed from beast

Phrases with beast

2 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with beast

12 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about beast

What does beast mean?
Beast means any four-footed land mammal.
What is beast in Hindi?
Beast in Hindi is वहश (vahaś), जानवर (jānvar), हैवान (haivān). See Beast meaning in Hindi.
How do you use beast in a sentence?
Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]’
What part of speech is beast?
Beast can be a noun, a verb, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce beast?
Beast is pronounced /biːst/ (UK).
What is the plural of beast?
The plural of beast is beasts.

Words near beast in the dictionary

  1. Beasdale
  2. Beasley
  3. Beasleys
  4. Beason
  5. Beasons
  6. beast
  7. Beast from the East
  8. beast mode
  9. beast of burden
  10. beast of draft
  11. beast of draught

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beast (page history and authors); Beast (page history and authors); BEAST (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-beast.ogg.

Cite this entry: “beast.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beast. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.