beast from late Middle English (in Wyclif's translation of the Bible), the Beast was a name for Antichrist (see also the mark of the beast, the number of the beast).
Beast of Belsen a byname for Josef Kramer (1906–45), German commandant of Belsen concentration camp from December 1944, who in 1945 was tried before a British military tribunal and executed.
Beast of Bodmin Moor the name given to a panther-like creature supposedly living in the Bodmin Moor area; despite reports of such feral cats from the early 1990s, no conclusive proof for their existence has yet been demonstrated.
Beast of Bolsover the nickname of the Labour politician Dennis Skinner (1932– ), MP for Bolsover in Derbyshire and noted for his abrasive manner and left-wing views.
beast with two backs a term for a man and woman in the act of sexual intercourse; originally as a quotation from Shakespeare's Othello (1602–4). Earlier Rabelais had had, ‘faire la bête à deux dos [do the two-backed beast together]’.

beast / bēst/ • n. an animal, esp. a large or dangerous four-footed one: a wild beast. ∎  (usu. beasts) a domestic animal, esp. a bovine farm animal. ∎  an inhumanly cruel, violent, or depraved person: he is a filthy drunken beast. ∎ inf. an objectionable or unpleasant person or thing: a scheming, manipulative little beast. ∎  (the beast) a person's brutish or untamed characteristics: the beast in you is rearing its ugly head. ∎  inf. a thing or concept possessing a particular quality: that much-maligned beast, the rave record.

beast XIII. — OF. beste (mod. bête) — L. bestia. Beast displaced deer and was itself largely displaced by animal.