beastly, beestli, bestely

& adv. [Eng. beast; -ly.] A. As adjective : 1. Resembling an animal, or anything po e ed by an animal. *2. Like anything po e ed by an animal. "It is sown a beestli bod i, it shall rise a spiritual bod i."-1 Cor . xv. 44 ( Wielif ). (Trench.) " Beastly divinities, and droves of gods."-Prior. 3. Po e ed of animal rather than human qualities, or at least supposed to be so; acting like the brutes. ". the herdsman of the beastly plebeians..."Shakesp.: Coriolanus, ii. 1. B. As adverb: As if a beast had done it; as by a beast. "Who neigh'd so high, that what I would have spoke Was beastly dumb'd by him." Shakesp.: Antony and Cleopatra , i. 5. beast-u-al, a. [BESTIAL.] beat, *bēte (pret, beat , * beot ; pa. par. beaten , beat , beten , beoten), v.t. & i. [A.S. beatan (pret. beot , pa. par. beaten ); O. Icel. bauta; Sw. bulta ; O. Sw. beta ; Fr. battre ; Prov. batre; Sp. batir ; Port. bater ; Ital. battere ; Lat, batuo , battuo; Pol. bic ; Ru . bitj ; Serv. batati . Imitated from the sound of a smart blow.] A. Transitive : I. Literally: To inflict blows on a person or thing. 1. To give to a human or other sentient being repeated blows with an instrument, or with the closed or open hand; in fighting, for the sake of a ault, for punishment, or for any other object. "And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes."- Luke xii. 47. make them of no more voice Than dogs, that are as often beat for barking." Shakesp. Coriolanus, ii. 2. 2. To give succe ive blows to such an instrument as a drum, to elicit from it music. "Or at their chamber-door I'll beat the drum, Till it cry sleep to death." Shakesp.: Lear, ii. 4. 3. To give blows to anything to modify its form or consistency, or for any similar purpose. Specially (a) To hammer a metal into a required form, as gold into wire or leaf, or heated iron on an anvil. "They did beat the gold into thin plates, and cut it into wires to work it." - Exod. xxxix. 3. (b) To pound any substance in a mortar. "The people gathered manna, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a in a mortar, and baked it." -Numb . xi. 8. (c) To thresh out corn or any other cereal, or such a plant as hemp, by means of a flail or a threshing-machine. "They save the laborious work of beating of hemp, by making the axle-tree of the main wheel of their corn mills longer than ordinary, and placing of pius in them, to raise large hammers like those used for paper and fulling mills, with which they beat most of their hemp."-Mortimer (d) To give blows to trees or brushwood, with the view of shaking down fruit or starting game. [BEAT DOWN.] "When thou be a test thine olive-tree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherle , and for the widow."- Deut . xxiv. 20. "When from the cave thou risest with the day To beat the woods, and rouse the bounding prey." Prior. (e) Gently to strike by means of a spoon, or to agitate a liquid by means of a tremulous, a rotatory, or any other motion. "By long beating the the white of an egg with with a lump of alum, you may bring it into white curds."-Boyle. 4. To strike with the feet in place of the hands. (Used of walking, dancing, .; or of treading the ground till a path is formed.) "Come knit hands, and beat the ground In a light fantastic round."- Milton : Comus. "While I this unexampled task e ay, Pa awful gulfs, and beat my painful way, Celestial dove! divine a istance bring." Black more. IMG:content-1170.png:[blocks in formation] 2. To stimulate. (See also C. 10.) B. Intransitive: I. Ordinary Language: 1. To strike against anything. (1) With man for the agent : To strike upon anything with the hand or with a weapon; to knock at a door. the men of the city beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house."- Judg . xix. 22. (2) With a thing for the agent: To strike against, as a storm of wind or rain, the agitated waves of the ocean, or the rays of the sun during fierce heat. ( Lit. or fig .) (a) Literally : "Your brow, which does no fear of thunder know, Sees rowling tempests vainly beat below." Dryden. the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die." -Jonah iv. 8. (b) Figuratively: "Public envy seemeth to beat chiefly upon ministers- Bacon . (3) To vibrate, giving a succe ion of blows, as a clock striking, or a bell tolling. But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower." Long fellow: Belfry of Bruges. In (1), though the form of the verb is intransitive, the sense is almost transitive; in (3) it is almost pa ive in reality. So we speak of drums beating , meaning really being beaten. 2. Of the heart or veins: To pulsate or throb, especially when one is mentally agitated; also of a swelling containing pus. ( Literally and figuratively.) "No pulse shall keep Shakesp.: Romeo and Juliet, iv. 1. His nat'ral progre , but surcease to beat ." There is a different reading in some other editions. "Thy heart these two weeks has been beating fast With many hopes Words worth: Michael. II. Naut.: To make way against the wind by tacking to and fro. C. In compound terms or special phrases: 1. To beat a path is, by means of frequent walking in a particular direction, to beat down herbage, the mud, or inequalities of surface, so as to make a path where none existed before. [BEATEN, 4.] 2. To beat about: To search for, like a person going through bushes and beating them for game. "I am always beating about in my thoughts for something that may turn to the benefit of my dear countrymen."- Add is on . To beat about the bush is to approach a question in a cautious and roundabout way. 3. To beat back : To draw back by violence, or to compel by some insurmountable diff i 479 culty in the way to return. (Applied to men, to the ocean beaten back from the shore, .) "Twice have I sally'd, and was twice beat back." Dryden. "Above the brine, where Caledonia's rocks Beat back the surge, and where Hibernia shoots." Cowper: To the Immortal Memory of the Halibut. 4. To beat down: (a) To knock down by literal blows inflicted on the body of a sentient being, or by engines of war used to batter forts. and, behold, the multitude melted away, and they went on beating down one another."-1 Sam. xiv. 16. "And he beat down the tower of Penuel, and slew the men of the city."- Judg . viii. 17. (b) To terminate, or to render powerle by active effort of an antagonistic kind. the party which had long thwarted him had been beaten down."-Macaulay: Hist. Eng ., ch. iv. (c) To endeavour by stipulation or by haggling to reduce the price asked for an article "Surveys rich moveables with curious eye, Beats down the price, and threatens still to buy." Dryden (d) To le en price in some other way. "Usury beats down the price of land; for the elaployment of money is chiefly either merchandizing or purchasing: and usury waylays both."- Bacon . 5. To beat hollow : So completely to beat, distance, or surpa , that the reputation of the vanquished person or thing, formerly looked on as solid, is now seen to be hollow. (Colloquial & vulgar.) 6. To beat into: (a) Literally : To beat till an entrance effected. "And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full." Mark iv. 37. (b) Figuratively : To introduce into by constant repetition. (Used specially of the painful effort to introduce knowledge into a dull brain.) 7. To beat off : (a) To drive away by blows, or le accurately by threats of blows. and an attempt to beat of the lictors, and to rescue her from the hands of M. Claudius, is threatened " -Lewis : Early Rom. Hist ., ch. xii., pt. iii., § 51. (b) To drive away by anything unpleasant for the mind or heart to endure. "The younger part of mankind might be beat of from the belief of the most important points even of natural religion, by the impudent jests of a profane wit."-Watts. (c) To separate mechanically. things.) (Used of "And it shall come to pa in that day, that the Lord shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt..."- Isa . xxvii. 12. 8. To beat out: (a) To compel one to quit a place by beating him; to drive out, to expel. ( Lit. and fig .) "He that proceeds upon other principles in his inquiry does at least post himself in a party, which he will not quit till he be beaten out ."-Locke. "He cannot beat it out of his head, but that it was a cardinal who picked his pocket."-Add is on. (b) To overcome with fatigue. [Generally in the pa ive, to be beaten out ( Colloquial ). Very common also in the phrase "dead beat ."] (c) To thresh out, to separate from the husk by blows. (Used of the threshing of grain.) "So she gleaned in the field until even, and beat out that she had gleaned."- Ruth ii. 17. (d) To beat something which is malleable-a metal, for instance, till it takes a more extended form than that previously po e ed. "And he made two cherubims of gold, beaten out of one piece -Exod . xxxvii. 7. (e) Fig :: To count out or mark, as by the beat of a pendulum or anything by which time is noted; hence to define clearly. "In the dusk of thee the clock Beats out the little lives of men." Tennyson: In Memoriam. "Perplexed in faith, faith, but pure in in deeds, At last he beat his music out ."-/bid. 9. To beat the air: (a) Literally : To aim a blow which strikes only the air. A pugilist might do this in private exercise, as a preliminary flourish to serious fighting, or in that serious fighting itself, by mi ing his antagonist. (b) Figuratively : To put forth fruitle aims in spiritual or other contests. (See also C. 14.) "I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air."-1 Cor . ix. 26. 10. To beat the brains: To attempt to stimulate the brain to exertion beyond what is natural to it; to "cudgel" the brains. "It is no point of wisdom for a man to beat his brains, and spend his spirits, about things impo ible."- lake will. 480 11. To beat the chest (in the menage ): A term used of a borse, when at each motion he fails to take in ground enough with his fore-legs, or when he makes curvets too precipitately or too low. 12. To beat the head: The same as to beat 02 brains (q. v.). "Why any one should waste his time and beat his head about the Latin grammar, who does not intend to be a critick." - Locke . 13. To beat the hoof: To walk; to go on foot. (Johnson.) 14. To beat the wind: To strike at the air with a sword. In ancient trials by combat, when one of the parties did not appear, the other was simply required to make some flourishes in the air with his weapon, on executing which he was entitled to all the honours of victory. 15. To beat the wing: To strike the air with the wings. "Thrice have I beat the wing, and rid with night About the world." Dryden. 16. To beat time: To note time in music by a movement of the hand or baton. 17. To beat to arms: To beat a drum with the view of a embling the soldiers or armed citizens of a town. (James.) 18. To beat to quarters : To give the signal on board war-ships for every man to go to his proper station. 19. To beat up: To attack suddenly, or to alarm. (Used specially in the phrase " to beat up the quarters of an enemy." (See also No. 20.) "They lay in that quiet posture, without making the least impre ion upon the enemy by beating up his quarters, which might easily have been done." Clarendon 20. To beat up for : To go hither and thither in quest of. (Used specially in the expre ion " to beat up for recruits," to search through markets or other places for them, formerly with actual beat of drum.) Beat up is also used in the same sense without for ; as "he is beating up recruits for the society," . 21. To beat upon : (a) Lit .: To strike upon, as a person may do with his hand or a weapon, or a tempest by the air which it sets in motion. (b) Fig .: To revert to repeatedly. "We are drawn on into a larger speech, by reason of their so great earnestne , who beat more and more upon these last alleged words."- Hooker . "How frequently and fervently doth the Scripture beat upon this cause."- Hake will. 22. To beat upon a walk (in the menage): A term used of a horse when he walks too0 short. (a) Crabb thus distinguishes between the verbs to beat , to strike , and to hit . To beat is to redouble blows; to strike is to give one single blow; but the bare touching in consequence of an effort constitutes hitting . We never beat but with design, nor hit without an aim, but we may strike by accident. It is the part of the strong to beat of the most vehement to strike of the most sure-sighted to hit . (b) To beat , to defeat , to overpower , to rout, and to overthrow are thus discriminated: "Το beat is an indefinite term expre ive of no particular degree: the being beaten may be attended with greater or le damage. To be defeated is a specific disadvantage; it is a failure in a particular object of more or le importance. To be overpowered is a positive lo ; it is a lo of the power of acting which may be of longer or shorter duration. To be routed is a temporary disadvantage; a rout alters the course of proceeding, but does not disable. To be overthrown is the greatest of all mischiefs, and is applicable only to great armies and great concerns an overthrow commonly decides a contest. Beat is a term which reflects more or le dishonour on the general or the army, or on both. Defeat is an indifferent term; the best generals may sometimes be defeated by circumstances which are above human control Overpowering is coupled with no particular honour to the winner, nor disgrace to the loser; superior power is oftener the result of good fortune than of skill: the bravest and finest troops may be overpowered in cases which exceed human power. A rout is always disgraceful, particularly to the army; it always arises from want of firmne . An overthrow is fatal rather than dishonourable; it excites pity rather than contempt." (Crabb: Eng. Synon.)