A bestiary is a collection of moralized fables, particularly those from the Middle Ages, featuring real or mythical animals.
Un bestiario es una colección de fábulas moralizadas, especialmente las escritas en la Edad Media, sobre animales reales o míticos.
| Back | bestiary \BES-chee-er-ee, BEES-\ |
|---|---|
| Front | noun A collection of moralized fables, especially as written in the Middle Ages, about actual or mythical animals. [Bestiary is from the Latin bestiaries meaning "a fighter against beasts in the public entertainments." It entered English in the 1620s.] It was pieced together into no named pattern native to this country, not star flower or flying bird of churn dasher or poplar leaf, but was some entirely made-up bestiary or zodiac of half-visionary creatures. - Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain, 1997 An inexperienced heraldist resembles a medieval traveler who brings back from the East the faunal fantasies influenced by the domestic bestiary he possessed all along rather than by the results of direct zoological exploration. - Vladamir Nabokov, Speak, Memory, 1951 |
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