bestiality
Americannoun
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brutish or beastly character or behavior; beastliness.
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indulgence in beastlike appetites, instincts, impulses, etc.
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an instance of bestial character or behavior.
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sexual relations between a person and an animal; sodomy.
noun
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bestial behaviour, character, or action
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sexual activity between a person and an animal
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of bestiality
1350–1400; Middle English bestial ( i ) te (< Anglo-French, Middle French ) < Medieval Latin bēstiālitās. See bestial, -ity
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Hence war, hence adultery, hence bestiality, Tim continues.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 5, 2026
“Elite panic” is the sociological term for it, when wealthy people are convinced that the peasants will dissolve into bestiality and preemptively start shooting anyone who wanders into their neighborhoods during a crisis.
From Slate ● Oct. 13, 2020
The invasion, as historians recall, worked because, at that moment, there was a genuine impulse, however scarred by national rivalries, to intervene on behalf of humanity against bestiality.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 6, 2019
The Greek authorities banned Katidis from playing in national teams for life while condemning him for insulting "the victims of Nazi bestiality" and "injuring the deeply pacifist and human character of the game".
From The Guardian ● Apr. 1, 2013
The Sphinx, that double being, symbolizes the double natured man, to whom his bestiality still clings.
From Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts by Jelliffe, Smith Ely
The bestialities of World War I made the romance and optimism of his work go out of fashion, for that era brought the onslaught of symbolism, Freudian introspection, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.
From Time Magazine Archive
The bestialities of the last War were likewise excoriated by German Artist George Grosz.
From Time Magazine Archive
They walk with God, and the bestialities of us animals are fantastic to them.
From Saint's Progress by Galsworthy, John
If I had time, I would gladly go there again for a couple of weeks, to find a little solitude in the Zoological Gardens and to forget somewhat other bestialities.
From Letters of Franz Liszt -- Volume 1 from Paris to Rome: Years of Travel as a Virtuoso by Bache, Constance
The stupidity of Claudius is discovered to be astuteness, the bestialities of Nero elegance.
From Tacitus and Bracciolini The Annals Forged in the XVth Century by Ross, John Wilson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
