Noun

(en noun)

Any animal other than a human; usually only applied to land vertebrates, especially large or dangerous four-footed ones.

(more specific)  A domestic animal, especially a bovine farm animal.

*

Boxer was an enormous beast , nearly eighteen hands high, and as strong as any two ordinary horses put together.

*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=7 citation , passage=‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared. […]’}}

A person who behaves in a violent, antisocial or uncivilized manner.

(slang) A large and impressive automobile.

(slang, prisons) A sex offender.

* 1994 , Elaine Player, Michael Jenkins, Prisons After Woolf: Reform Through Riot (page 190)

Shouts had been heard: 'We're coming to kill you, beasts .' In desperation, Rule 43s had tried to barricade their doors

* 1994 , Adam Sampson, Acts of Abuse: Sex Offenders And the Criminal Justice System (page 83)

For many prisoners and in many prisons, antipathy towards 'nonces' or 'beasts' is little more than an idea

(figuratively) Something unpleasant and difficult.

* 2000 , Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon , Berkley (2001), ISBN 9780425180969, page 905:

Even unopposed, the natural obstacles are formidable, and defending his line of advance will be a beast of a problem."

* 2006 , Heather Burt, Adam's Peak , Dundurn Press (2006), ISBN 9781550026467, page 114:

He'd be in the hospital a few days — broken collarbone, a cast on his arm, a beast of a headache — but fine.

* 2011 , :

And, oh, poor Atlas / The world's a beast of a burden / You've been holding up a long time

Noun

(en noun)

A created thing, whether animate or inanimate; a creation.

* 1633 , (John Donne), "Sapho to Philænis":

Thoughts, my mindes creatures , often are with thee, / But I, their maker, want their libertie.

* 1646 , (Thomas Browne), Pseudodoxia Epidemica , I.10:

the natural truth of God is an artificial erection of Man, and the Creator himself but a subtile invention of the Creature .

* {{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Ben Travers), title=(A Cuckoo in the Nest)

, chapter=1 citation , passage=She was like a Beardsley Salome , he had said. And indeed she had the narrow eyes and the high cheekbone of that creature , and as nearly the sinuosity as is compatible with human symmetry.}}

A living being; an animal or human.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-08, volume=407, issue=8839, page=55, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Obama goes troll-hunting , passage=According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.}}

A being subservient to or dependent upon another.

* 1988 , James McPherson, Battle Cry for Freedom , Oxford 2003, p. 240:

they, too, despite the appearance of being creatures rather than creators of the Union, could assert the prior sovereignty of their states, for each had formed a state constitution […] before petitioning Congress for admission to the Union.