wild-animal

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See also: wild animal

English

Noun

wild-animal (plural wild-animals)

  1. Archaic form of wild animal.
    • 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:
      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.
    • 1842, Thomson, chapter VIII, in Widows and Widowers. A Romance of Real Life., volume II, London: Richard Bentley, , →OCLC, page 183:
      Lady Wentworth was pacing up and down, like a wild-animal in its den.
    • 1859 December 12, Western , “Correspondence of the Express”, in The Iredell Express. , volume III, number 5, Statesville, N.C., published 1860 January 6, front page, column 1:
      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.
    • 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 , column 7:
      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!
    • 1871 June 7, “Social Instincts of Animals”, in The Bedford County Press, volume IV, number 15, Bloody Run, Pa., front page, column 4:
      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. []
      Wild animals is unhyphenated in the versions published in Littell’s Living Age, Macmillan’s Magazine, and The Galaxy.