Dictionary

wild-animal en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (alt-of, archaic) Archaic form of wild animal.
   alt of wild animal
   • South of us begins a short distance, an interminable morass; a paradise for sportsmen, inhabited only by water-fowl, wild-animals, snakes, mosquitoes, and a few squatter sovereigns. 1859 December 12, Western [pseudonym], “Correspondence of the Express”, in The Iredell Express. […], volume III, number 5, Statesville, N.C., published 6 January 1860, front page, column 1:
   • Some recent contributions to animal psychology, which are both new and interesting, have been made by Mr. Francis Galton, on the half-wild cattle of western South Africa, which he thus describes: “[…] They were watched from a distance during the day, as they roamed about over the country, and at night they were driven with cries to enclosures, into which they rushed much like a body of terrified wild-animals driven by huntsmen into a trap.[…]” 1871 June 7, “Social Instincts of Animals”, in The Bedford County Press, volume IV, number 15, Bloody Run, Pa., front page, column 4:
   • We have just published a New Edition of this Great Work, Illustrated with very fine CHROMO-LITHOGRAPHIC PLATES: Giving the Coloring to Life of the Scenery and Wild-Animals From Drawings made by DR. LIVINGSTONE, during Sixteen Year Wanderings in the Wilds of South Africa! 1860 September 1, J. W. Bradley, “New Illustrated Edition of Livingstone’s Explorations in Africa”, in Waukegan Weekly Gazette, volume 10, number 49, Waukegan, Ill., page [2], column 7:
   • Lady Wentworth was pacing up and down, like a wild-animal in its den. 1842, [Katherine] Thomson, chapter VIII, in Widows and Widowers. A Romance of Real Life., volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 183:
   • The dance interrupted, in a quarter of an hour, by battle; the cries, the squealings of children, of infirm persons, and other assistants, tarring them on, as the rabble does when dogs fight: frightful men, or rather frightful wild-animals, clad in jupes of coarse woollen, with large girdles of leather, studded with copper nails; of gigantic stature, heightened by high wooden-clogs (sabots); rising on tiptoe to see the fight; tramping time to it; rubbing their sides with their elbows: their faces haggard (figures hâves), and covered with their long greasy hair; the upper part of the visage waxing pale, the lower distorting itself into the attempt at a cruel laugh and a sort of ferocious impatience. 1837, Thomas Carlyle, “Petition in Hieroglyphs”, in The French Revolution: A History […], volume I (The Bastille), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, book II (The Paper Age), page 35:

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