[f. L. fer-a wild beast + -AL.]

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  1.  Of an animal: Wild, untamed. Of a plant, also (rarely), of ground: Uncultivated.

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  Now often applied to animals or plants that have lapsed into a wild from a domesticated condition.

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1659.  D. Pell, Impr. Sea, 213. It is impossible to reduce this feral creature.

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1859.  Darwin, Orig. Spec., i. (1878), 18. The dovecot pigeon, which is the rock-pigeon in a very slightly altered state, has become feral in several places.

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1875.  Lyell, Princ. Geol., II. III. xxxv. 281. Domesticated animals allowed to run wild or become ‘feral.’

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1877.  Coues & Allen, N. Amer. Rod., 200. A corresponding variability is as normal to some purely feral animals as to the semi-domesticated species.

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1882.  W. T. T. Dyer, in Nature, XXV. 390. The Jardin des Plantes deals not merely with plants in their feral, but also in their cultivated state.

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1882.  Geikie, Geol. Sketches, 377. The feral ground, or territory left in a state of nature and given up to game, lies mostly upon rocks.

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  2.  Of, pertaining to, or resembling a wild beast; brutal, savage.

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1604.  T. Wright, Passions, v. 268. Some … arrive at a certayne ferall or savage brutishnesse.

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1659.  D. Pell, Impr. Sea, 299. That feral and savage kinde of people which are … of a Cannibal … nature. Ibid., 368. Against the Spaniard, and the rest of our feral, and remote Antagonists.

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1838.  J. F. Ferrier, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness, in Blackwood’s Magazine, XLIII., June, 789/2. A truer and more potent charm—the spell of an inverted and unfabulous enchantment, which converts the feral into the human being.

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1847.  Gilfillan, in Tait’s Mag., XIV. 622. It is not the feral or fiendish element in human nature.

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  3.  Used as sb.: A wild-beast. Obs. rare.

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1639.  G. Daniel, Eclesiasticus xiii. 61.

        What [alliance] ’twixt those ferals of Societie,
Hiena and the Dog?

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  Hence Ferality, the state of being feral.

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1885.  J. S. Stallybrass, trans. Hehn’s The Wanderings of Plants and Animals, 21. There often sets in, from other historic causes, a period of ferality, when the land presents the appearance, here of being exhausted by culture. Ibid., 39. The freedom in which young horses were bred must have frequently led to complete ferality.

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