Word.ws English Dictionary

beastly

/ˈbiːstli/

beastly adjective: pertaining to, or having the form, nature, or habits of, a beast.

Adjective

beastly (comparative beastlier or more beastly, superlative beastliest or most beastly)

  1. (UK) Pertaining to, or having the form, nature, or habits of, a beast.
  2. (UK) Similar to the nature of a beast; contrary to the nature and dignity of human beings.
    • beastly culture
    Synonyms:
    brutal, filthy
  3. (UK, dated) Abominable; very unpleasant; hideous.
    • beastly weather
    • Stop being so beastly to her!
  4. (UK, slang) Of computer hardware or motor vehicles etc.: ostentatiously powerful.
    • 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.2010 January 11, Matthew DeCarlo, “Silverstone mini-ITX case can fit Radeon HD 5970”, in TechSpot
    • 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.2014, March 21, Tycho de Feijter, “Hummer H2 is a Big Black Beast in the Rain in China”, CarNewsChina.com

Adverb

beastly (comparative more beastly, superlative most beastly)

  1. (UK) Like a beast; brutishly.
    • Beastly he threwe her downe, ne car'd to spill / Her garments gay with scales of fish that all did fill.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • They have insulted me most beastly. Moreover, they are, everyone of them, black-satan filthmen.1901, The Literary World, volume 63, page 35
  2. (UK, colloquial, dated) Very much; terribly.
    • "I'm beastly sorry, Wynn, old man," he muttered. "I ought to have remembered."1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC
    • 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...1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

beastly meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Malayalam

beastly in Hindi

beastly, ferocious, rapacious
दरिंदा darindā

beastly in Tamil

விலங்கு போன்ற, விலங்கின் செயல்களுள்ள, மனிதர் பயன்படுத்தக் தகுதியற்ற, விலங்குத்தனமாகச் சிற்றின்ப நாட்டமிக்க, அழுக்கடைந்த, விரும்பத்தகாத

beastly in Bengali

pertaining to, or having the form, nature, or habits of a beast
পাশবিক paśbik, হায়ওয়ানী haẏōẇani
characterizing the nature of a beast; brutal; filthy
পাশবিক paśbik, হায়ওয়ানী haẏōẇani

beastly in Malayalam

horrible, awful, rotten
മൃഗീയമായ, ഭയങ്കരമായ, നികൃഷ്ടമായ, ഘോരം, ദാരുണ, ഭയാനകം
nasty, unkind, malicious
വന്യമായ, ജന്തുപ്രായ, പശുപ്രായ, മൃഗതുല്യമായ, നികൃഷ്ടമായ, ദയവില്ലാത്ത
More languagesFewer languages
beastly in Gujarati
હેવાન hevān

Examples of beastly in a sentence

  • “Yes, I’ve got the most beastly headache.”1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 58:
  • "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."1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 165:
  • 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.2018 October 16, Chris Smith, “Huawei just unveiled the most beastly Android phone the world has ever seen”, in BGR:

All 18 example sentences with beastly

Synonyms of beastly

All synonyms of beastly

Forms of beastly

Adjective
comparativebeastlier
comparativemore beastly
superlativebeastliest
superlativemost beastly
Adverb
comparativemore beastly
superlativemost beastly

Origin of beastly

From Middle English bestely, bestly, equivalent to beast + -ly. Compare West Frisian bistachtich (“beastly”), Dutch beestachtig (“beastly”), German biestig (“beastly”).

Words formed from beastly

Words that rhyme with beastly

Questions about beastly

What does beastly mean?
Beastly means pertaining to, or having the form, nature, or habits of, a beast.
What is beastly in Hindi?
Beastly in Hindi is दरिंदा (darindā). See Beastly meaning in Hindi.
How do you use beastly in a sentence?
“Yes, I’ve got the most beastly headache.”
What part of speech is beastly?
Beastly can be an adjective or an adverb.
How do you pronounce beastly?
Beastly is pronounced /ˈbiːstli/.

Words near beastly in the dictionary

  1. beastlily
  2. beastliness
  3. beastlinesses
  4. beastling
  5. beastlings
  6. beastly
  7. beastly careless
  8. beastlyhead
  9. beastman
  10. beastmaster
  11. beastmasters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beastly (page history and authors); दरिंदा (Hindi) (page history and authors); beastly (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); beastly (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); હેવાન (Gujarati) (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-beastly.ogg.

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