beef
Americannoun
-
beeves,
plural
-
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.
-
Informal.
-
brawn; muscular strength.
-
strength; power.
-
weight, as of a person.
-
human flesh.
-
-
Slang.
-
a complaint.
-
an argument or dispute.
-
verb (used without object)
-
beefs,
present (3rd person singular)
-
beefed,
past participle, past
-
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
-
informal human flesh, esp when muscular
-
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
-
beefsimple
-
beefssimple
-
have beefedperfect
-
has beefedperfect
-
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:
Syntagma Square, in the heart of the Greek capital, was closed to traffic, with a heavy police presence to beef up security, AFP photographers saw.
From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026
Red wine vinegar is wonderful with hearty lentil, bean and farro soups, and I love it in beef stew.
From Salon ● Oct. 5, 2026
Bison, it turned out, could pay their own way as meat—leaner than beef, raised without added hormones, and increasingly sought by Americans favoring whole, unprocessed food.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
Kroger’s category managers have bargained separately over individual product categories like chips and soda, or beef and chicken, even when the same company sells both.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 30, 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
The new law beefs up the penalties for those that flout the ban.
From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2026
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
A large portion of this is because the hip-hop industry has mistreated Megan with exploitative record deals, beefs with rappers and the spread of misinformation online.
From Salon ● Nov. 1, 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
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
But angry words, as Bowles well knows, bring few beeves to market.
From Time Magazine Archive
Probably not, because only a minute proportion of Brazil's beeves have been fattened with the aid of hormones.
From Time Magazine Archive
But if you raid the beeves, I see destruction for ship and crew.
From "The Odyssey" by Homer
Although Astra "was not involved" in the incident, OpenAI has beefed up its safety measures, the company said in a blog post.
From Barron's ● Sep. 1, 2026
Or three letters for “Rapper who famously beefed with Jay-Z”? Try your hand at today’s crossword!
From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2026
Sagan beefed up the L.A.-to-Seattle route to help followers of the U.S. team attend early-round group matches.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 8, 2026
Trackers have really evolved, and beefed up on artificial intelligence.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 7, 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
He tried switching to TikTok ads and beefing up the club’s email list.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2026
And finally, with the SEC opening the door to tokenized equities, they explain what it means for stocks to be traded like crypto—and why AMC is beefing with Robinhood over it.
From Slate ● Sep. 19, 2026
LinkedIn says it is beefing up scam-detection efforts but can’t catch everything.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
Ford also is beefing up its use of connected data to steer owners to its dealers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 6, 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.
