beef
Noun
- The flesh of a cow, bull, or ox used as food.
- cattle that are reared for their meat
- meat from an adult domestic bovine
- informal terms for objecting
- The meat from cattle or other bovines.
- The meat from cattle or other bovines.
- The edible portions of a cow (including those which are not meat).
- The meat from cattle or other bovines.
- Muscle or musculature; size, strength or potency.
- The meat from cattle or other bovines.
- Essence, content; the important part of a document or project.
- Bovine animals.
- A bovine (cow or bull) being raised for its meat.
- A grudge; dislike (of something or someone); lack of faith or trust (in something or someone); a reason for a dislike or grudge. (often + with)
- Fibrous calcite or limestone, especially when occurring in a jagged layer between shales in Dorset.
Verb
Verb Forms: beefed, beefing, beefs
- To strengthen or add substance to something.
- complain
- To complain.
- To add weight or strength to.
- To fart; break wind.
- To cry.
- To fail or mess up.
- To feud or hold a grudge against.
- To sing or speak loudly; to cry out.
Adj
- Being a bovine animal that is being raised for its meat.
- Producing or known for raising lots of beef.
- Consisting of or containing beef as an ingredient.
- Beefy; powerful; robust.
Examples
- beef country
- beef farms
- beef stew
- boneless lean beef trimmings
- David was beefing last night after Ruth told him off.
- Do you want to raise beeves?
- He had to BEEF up his vocabulary to compete in the tournament.
- He was cooking beef for lunch.
- He's got a beef with everyone in the room.
- He's got beef over what you said.
- I beefed my presentation hard yesterday.
- I love eating beef.
- lean finely textured beef
- My opponent and I have a friendly BEEF over the validity of two-letter words.
- Put some beef into it! We've got to get the car over the bump.
- Remember what happened last fall? That's his beef with me.
- The beef of his paper was a long rant about government.
- Those two are beefing right now — best you stay out of it.
- Ugh, who just beefed in here?
- We bought three beef calves this morning.
- We've got to get some beef into the enforcement provisions of that law.
- Wow, your audio setup is beef!
Origin / Etymology
PIE word
*gʷṓws
From Middle English beef, bef, beof, borrowed from Anglo-Norman beof, Old French buef, boef (“ox”) (modern French bœuf); from Latin bōs (“ox”), from Proto-Italic *gʷōs, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷṓws. Doublet of cow.
Beef in the sense of “a grudge, argument” was originally an American slang expression:
* attested as a verb “to complain” in 1888: “He'll beef an' kick like a steer an' let on he won't never wear 'em.”— New York World, 13 May;
* attested as a noun “complaint, protest, grievance, sim.” in 1899: “He made a Horrible Beef because he couldn't get Loaf Sugar for his Coffee.”—Fables in Slang (1900) by George Ade, page 80.
As to the possible origin of this American usage, it has been suggested that it can be traced back to a British expression for “alarm”, first recorded in 1725: "BEEF 'to alarm, as To cry beef upon us; they have discover'd us, and are in Pursuit of us". The term "beef" in this context would be a Cockney rhyming slang of thief. However, the continuous use of a similar expression, including its assumed semantic shift to 'complaint' in the United States from the 1880s onwards, needs further clarification.
Synonyms
beef cattle, bellyache, bitch, boeuf, crab, gripe, grouse, holler, kick, squawk, beef up, cowflesh, meat, oxflesh
Scrabble Score: 9
beef: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordbeef: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
beef: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary