beef
Americannoun
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beeves,
plural
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beefs
plural
-
the flesh of a cow, steer, or bull raised and killed for its meat.
-
an adult cow, steer, or bull raised for its meat.
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Informal.
-
brawn; muscular strength.
-
strength; power.
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weight, as of a person.
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human flesh.
-
-
Slang.
-
a complaint.
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an argument or dispute.
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verb (used without object)
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beefs,
present (3rd person singular)
-
beefed,
past participle, past
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beefing
present participle
verb phrase
noun
-
the flesh of various bovine animals, esp the cow, when killed for eating
-
an adult ox, bull, cow, etc, reared for its meat
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informal human flesh, esp when muscular
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a complaint
verb
-
slang (intr) to complain, esp repeatedly
he was beefing about his tax
-
informal to strengthen; reinforce
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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beefsimple
-
beefssimple
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have beefedperfect
-
has beefedperfect
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am beefingprogressive
-
are beefingprogressive
-
is beefingprogressive
-
have been beefingperfect progressive
-
has been beefingperfect progressive
Past
-
beefedsimple
-
had beefedperfect
-
was beefingprogressive
-
were beefingprogressive
-
had been beefingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of beef
First recorded in 1250–1300; 1885–90 beef for def. 5; Middle English, from Anglo-French beof, Old French boef, from Latin bov- (stem of bōs ) “ox, cow”; akin to cow 1
Explanation
Beef is meat from a cow. It's also a word for a complaint. If you have a beef with someone, you’re not sharing a steak, you have a gripe. Just don’t beef to a cow; her problems are worse. Beef is a type of meat from cattle. If you've ever had a hamburger, you've had beef. The word beef comes from the Old French word buef, which became the word for basically, cow meat. Beef is to cow as pork is to pig or mutton is to sheep. On the other hand, if you have a beef with someone, you have a complaint. Beefing is expressing such feelings.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
On one side: beef ranchers and dairy operators who advocate sustainable and organic food and land practices; they note the seashore was established, in part, to preserve their way of life.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2026
Tyson earlier this year closed a Lexington, Neb., beef plant, one of the industry’s largest, and halved production at a Texas plant.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
And it could increase the potential beef between City and Chelsea following Maresca's move this summer.
From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026
Inflationary pressures on grocery prices and supply chains have caused the cost of a standard beef burrito to climb 50% since 2020.
From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2026
With Argentinian beef, Colombian platinum, and a multitude of raw materials from Brazil, the Nazis could keep their war machine going for the foreseeable future.
From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield
While the rapper born Jermaine Lamarr Cole and raised in Fayetteville, N.C., has participated in his share of public beefs, he has never acted like he had all the answers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 10, 2026
Released in January, "Hiss" set the tone and standard for rap beefs and diss tracks to come later in the year.
From Salon ● Dec. 28, 2024
You may not typically think of WordPress, the blogging platform turned ubiquitous content management system, as a workplace rife with corporate drama, or as an instigator of petty public beefs.
From Slate ● Oct. 11, 2024
Drake had other beefs with other performers, like Meek Mill in 2015, and most infamously Pusha T in 2018, where the latter rapper dropped “The Story of Adidon,” revealing Drake is a father.
From Seattle Times ● May 7, 2024
In my lunch group, we dissected whatever had gone on that morning at school, any beefs we had with teachers, any assignments that struck us as useless.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
But Bessent’s image of immigrants smuggling their infected beeves across the border is transparent fantasy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 19, 2025
He described it as “a few hundred acres of dirt, some clusters of old barns and outbuildings… a few beeves and hogs or a flock of sheep.”
From Salon ● Oct. 18, 2012
At that, 50,000 people applauded, fell upon 1.000 barbecued beeves, 130,000 foot-long sandwiches, downed gallons of lemonade.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Grand Championship prize for best of baby beeves went to an Aberdeen-Angus.
From Time Magazine Archive
But if you raid the beeves, I see destruction for ship and crew.
From "The Odyssey" by Homer
Or three letters for “Rapper who famously beefed with Jay-Z”? Try your hand at today’s crossword!
From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2026
Over the past year, the carrier has beefed up its schedule there and is poised to win back gates it previously lost.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
Willis' all-action game would have beefed up England's anaemic Six Nations.
From BBC ● Jun. 8, 2026
The rest of the city also saw a beefed up police presence, with offices, businesses and schools braced for shutdown orders.
From Barron's ● Apr. 21, 2026
This tally of instruments, occasionally beefed up by timpani and trumpets, was the template for the classical orchestra as used by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and their contemporaries.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
Takaichi has also accelerated a beefing up of Japan's military capabilities as its sheds its strict pacifist stance in place since the war.
From Barron's ● Aug. 15, 2026
Picking up the pace is a worthy goal, he said, but that would mean beefing up the workforce, disrupting traffic and commerce with more street closures, and asking customers to write bigger checks.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 25, 2026
His remarks come amid Germany beefing up its military capacity in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
From Barron's ● May 16, 2026
The measures range from beefing up record-keeping to prohibiting correspondent banking relationships.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026
It’s not that he was beefing with our father or that they didn’t get along—I take that back.
From "All American Boys" by Jason Reynolds
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
