Word.ws English Dictionary

beast of prey

beast of prey noun: a carnivorous animal that hunts for its food, especially one that preys on vertebrates.

beast of prey: a carnivorous animal that hunts for its food, especially one that preys on vertebrates
Image: jeffrey sohn, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

beast of prey (plural beasts of prey)

  1. A carnivorous animal that hunts for its food, especially one that preys on vertebrates.
  2. (figuratively) A predatory person, savagely cruel and ruthless in their treatment of others.
    • Much controversy has surrounded Nietzsche’s writings on the “higher” and “lower” types of man. Is he to be taken as glorifying the cruel tyrant, the “beast of prey”, or did he have some less repulsive ideal? The answer seems to be neither an unqualified yes nor an unqualified no.1973, Philippa Foot, “"Nietzsche: The Revaluation of Values"”, in Robert C. Solomon, Garden City, New York, editors, Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays, Anchor Books, →ISBN, page 160

beast of prey meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Sanskrit

beast of prey in Hindi

beast of prey, predatory animal
व्याल vyāl

beast of prey in Tamil

கோண்மா

beast of prey in Malayalam

a beast of prey; leopard
വ്യാഘ്രം vyāghraṁ

beast of prey in Sanskrit

a beast of prey
पापा pāpā, व्याल vyā̀la
More languagesFewer languages
beast of prey in Arabic
سَبْع sabʕ
beast of prey in Indonesian
hewan pemangsa, pemangsa

Forms of beast of prey

pluralbeasts of prey

Questions about beast of prey

What does beast of prey mean?
Beast of prey means a carnivorous animal that hunts for its food, especially one that preys on vertebrates.
What is beast of prey in Hindi?
Beast of prey in Hindi is व्याल (vyāl). See Beast of prey meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is beast of prey?
Beast of prey is a noun.
What is the plural of beast of prey?
The plural of beast of prey is beasts of prey.

Words near beast of prey in the dictionary

  1. Beast from the East
  2. beast mode
  3. beast of burden
  4. beast of draft
  5. beast of draught
  6. beast of prey
  7. beast of venery
  8. beast on
  9. beast with two backs
  10. beast-gate
  11. beast-gates

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beast of prey (page history and authors); व्याल (Hindi) (page history and authors); beast of prey (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); വ്യാഘ്രം (Malayalam) (page history and authors); पापा (Sanskrit) (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-beast of prey.wav.

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