beastly

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈbiːstli/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːstli

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.

   Synonyms: brutal, filthy

   beastly culture

3. (UK, dated) Abominable; very unpleasant.

   beastly weather

   Stop being so beastly to her!

4. (of computing hardware) Powerful, having a powerful appearance
   • 2010, January 11, Matthew DeCarlo, “Silverstone mini-ITX case can fit Radeon HD 5970”, 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”, 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.

Most often used pejoratively, but sense 4 has predominantly positive connotations. Bestial is more narrow, though also often used pejoratively.

• (like a beast): bestial, animalian

• beastliness

beastly (comparative more beastly, superlative most beastly)

1. 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.

• baetyls, baylets