bestiary
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of bestiary
1615–25; < Medieval Latin bēstiārium, neuter of Latin bēstiārius. See beast, -ary
Explanation
A bestiary is a book from the medieval era with pictures and stories of animals. Bestiaries includes real animals as well as mythical animals such as unicorns. A medieval source of information about animals is a bestiary — a book with descriptions of animals real and imaginary, often with moralizing tales of their exploits. In this respect, bestiaries had a lot in common with fairy tales, which also often end with a moral. Bestiaries often had gorgeous artwork portraying the real and fanciful creatures. If you like reading about centaurs as much as bears, you'd probably enjoy reading a bestiary, which is related to the word beast.
Vocabulary lists containing bestiary
Impossible Creatures
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Ballad and Dagger
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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:
The crew, who are near the end of a 65-year mission — suspended animation keeps them young and pretty — are transporting an extraterrestrial bestiary back to Earth.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2025
Designer Virginie Viard collaborated again with contemporary artist Xavier Veilhan who used a bestiary in house founder Coco Chanel’s apartment as a creative springboard for the carnival-like spring decor.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 24, 2023
The bestiary of acceptable species on which respectable researchers can experiment is expanding.
From Salon ● Aug. 20, 2022
With terrifying beasts like the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer, Stranger Things has slowly been building up an impressive bestiary of monsters.
From The Verge ● May 28, 2022
Jorge Borges, in his recent bestiary of mythical creatures, notes that the idea of round beasts was imagined by many speculative minds, and Johannes Kepler once argued that the earth itself is such a being.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
The design may have come from medieval bestiaries, which were "the origin for JK Rowling's book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", said Helen Geake.
From BBC ● Feb. 17, 2024
Perhaps you’re familiar with Ramparts magazine’s bestiaries, which lampooned the political follies of the 1960s, or “Sorel’s Unfamiliar Quotations” in The Atlantic Monthly.
From New York Times ● Nov. 24, 2021
Medieval bestiaries were books that served as compendiums of creatures both fantastic and real.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2019
She is a magpie, plucking language from myriad arenas: bestiaries, business documents, tourist pamphlets.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 13, 2016
The mythical animals catalogued in the bestiaries of the world seem, at a casual glance, nothing but exotic nonsense.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
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.
