beastien.

1765 R. Cumberland Summer's Tale iii. viii. 86 Master Grubb's Cows are sorely pester'd with the Tail-worm; so that we are fit to think..that the poor Beasties are Hag-ridden.

1786 R. Burns To Mouse in Poems 138 Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie.

1864 D. W. Thompson Day Dreams of Schoolmaster 229 Dogs..are religious beasties: but idolaters.

1880 M. A. Barker in Macmillan's Mag. 388 The sheep..are compact little beasties.

1904 St. Nicholas May 597/1 ‘Pinto’ [sc. a pony]..was a dear little beastie, although he never attained that to the degree of intelligence that Ned displayed as the years went on.

1992 Z. Wigglesworth & J. Wigglesworth Fielding's Austral. 1992 40 The most spectacular of the reptilian beasties is the frilled lizard.

2014 @tanis_em 19 Mar. in twitter.com accessed 17 Mar. 2021 My dog is sick... BUT! The vet and staff praised me for having such a well trained beastie so I win!

1820 R. Huish Cottager's Man. for Managem. Bees 7 [In an account of a Scotsman in a kilt being stung by a swarm of bees.] It was the Highland fling with all its graceful attitudes, accompanied every moment with the ejaculation ‘D——n the beasties—there be anither.’

1836 C. Parr Backwoods of Canada x. 159 These ‘beasties’ chiefly delight in biting the sides of the throat, ears, and sides of the cheek, and with me the swelling continues for several days.

1952 Arena (N.Z.) 31 14 But the leaving open of all doors and windows..often lets in innumerable small beasties.

2005 New Scientist (Nexis) 19 Nov. 21 [The insect Dipetalogaster maximus] has a big advantage over other bloodsucking beasties, such as ticks: ‘When it is full, you can just pick it off like a berry,’ says Voigt.

1867 Gentleman's Mag. Mar. 341/1 [Quoting from an undated ‘half sheet of paper..endorsed “Grace”’, apparently written at Dumbarton, and watermarked 1804] O Lord! preserve us frae a' witches and warlocks, and a' lang-nebed beasties that gang threw the heather.

1905 in A. S. Walker Beggar's Wallet 163 [Quoting ‘From a quaint old Litany’] Frae ghosties and ghoulies, long-leggettie beasties, And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.

1946 J. Niggli Pointers on Radio Writing v. 83 Here [sc. in tales of the supernatural] the realistic world is distorted. Ghosts and other beasties who scare us in the night, filter through from their plane to ours.

1991 Sci. Fiction Chron. May 5/2 I'm looking for supernatural horror... No Lovecraftian beasties.

2004 K. A. Corlett Ever your Servant xiv. 188 In Hindu lore, a fearsome beastie with a taste for mortal blood.

1889 Hardwicke's Sci.-Gossip 25 164/1 Amongst other beasties secured [sc. in some water samples] was an organism, of which I send you a drawing. It had no ciliary disk.., but its viscera..were notably those of a rotifer.

1908 Belfast Evening Tel. 24 Feb. 4/3 I am not sufficiently versed in the medical Almanach de Gotha to say whether or not his discovery of this obnoxious beastie [sc. a bacillus] constitutes his only claim to immortality.

1994 R. Hunziker Horned Frogs 27/2 Fish hobbyists would be amazed if they saw the number of infectious beasties that can be cultured from an average batch of feeder goldfish.

2020 Franklin County (New Zealand) News (Nexis) 3 Sept. 19 To a large extent our immediate economic futures are in the hands of COVID and how we are able to control the beastie.