beastly

Etymology

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

adj

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
3. (UK, dated) Abominable; very unpleasant.
   beastly weather
   Stop being so beastly to her!
4. (of computing hardware) Powerful, having a powerful appearance
   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. January 11 2010, 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
   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. October 16 2018, Chris Smith, “Huawei just unveiled the most beastly Android phone the world has ever seen”, in BGR

adv

1. Like a beast; brutishly.
   They have insulted me most beastly. Moreover, they are, everyone of them, black-satan filthmen. 1901, The Literary World, volume 63, page 35
   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. 1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita