BESTIAL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does bestial mean? 

• BESTIAL (adjective)
  The adjective BESTIAL has 1 sense:

1. resembling a beast; showing lack of human sensibility

  Familiarity information: BESTIAL used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BESTIAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Resembling a beast; showing lack of human sensibility

Synonyms:

beastly; bestial; brutal; brute; brutish

Context example:

bestial treatment of prisoners

Similar:

inhumane (lacking and reflecting lack of pity or compassion)

Derivation:

beast (a living organism characterized by voluntary movement)

bestiality (the stupid brutal quality of a beast)

bestialize (make brutal and depraved; give animal-like qualities to)

 Context examples 

He could find no kinship with these stolid-faced, ox-minded bestial creatures.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

How primitive and bestial it looks when you put it down in black and white!—and perhaps after all it is only a feeling peculiar to myself.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As he arose he lowered his crossed arms, exposing the bestial face of Beauty Smith.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centered on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

But then, may not I be peculiarly constituted to write? he queried, secretly exulting at the language he had used, his swift imagination throwing the whole scene and atmosphere upon a vast screen along with a thousand other scenes from his life—scenes that were rough and raw, gross and bestial.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The eyes, which were under thick and heavy brows, were bestial and ferocious, and as it opened its mouth to snarl what sounded like a curse at me I observed that it had curved, sharp canine teeth.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)