beast
noun
Beast — an animal seen through the lens of wildness or threat
Definition
A living organism characterized by voluntary movement
In depth
A beast is an animal, but rarely a neutral one — the word almost always carries a charge of wildness, danger, size, or moral judgment that 'animal' alone does not. To call a creature a beast is to register awe, fear, or contempt as much as to classify it biologically.
Origin
The word entered English through Old French beste, from Latin bestia, a wild animal, distinguished in Roman usage from domesticated animalia. That ancient distinction between the tamed and the wild has never quite left the word, which still tends to summon untamed nature even in its most figurative modern uses.
Usage examples
"The hunters spoke of the bear in hushed tones, calling it simply the beast, as though naming it fully might summon it."
"He had become, in his rage, something close to a beast, unrecognizable even to himself."
"The children's story cast every beast of the forest as secretly gentle, waiting only to be understood."
How to use it
Beast is a word with real emotional and moral texture, well suited to fable, gothic fiction, and any passage where a writer wants the animal in question to carry symbolic or psychological weight rather than mere zoological fact. Applied to a human, it almost always signals condemnation.
Related concepts
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