Military. a reduction in the personnel of an armed service or unit.
a reduction in the number of persons employed by a business, government department, etc., especially for budgetary reasons.
a member of a Berber people, inhabiting the Atlas Mountains in Morocco
Also called: Rifian. Riffian. the dialect of Berber spoken by this people
See Er Rif
First recorded in 1945–50; special use of RIF
R(eduction) I(n) F(orce)
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The Education Department said it will use a reduction in force process, known colloquially as a Rif, to reduce staffing levels.
From BBC • Mar. 11, 2025
Fighters form the Berber community resisted this, most notoriously in the long and bloody Rif War between 1921 and 1926, which saw the Spanish army decimated by forces led by Abdelkrim al-Khattabi.
From BBC • Dec. 25, 2023
It was Morocco's deadliest since at least a 2004 tremor in the northern Rif mountains that killed over 600 people.
From Reuters • Sep. 9, 2023
“Once here, many will have to face the complexity of life in Israel for non-Jewish migrants,” said Alex Rif, a Ukrainian-born poet and an advocate for Russian speakers in Israel.
From Seattle Times • Mar. 23, 2022
Or one of the classic examples is Abd-el-Krim destroying two different Spanish armies in the Moroccan Rif in the 1920s.
From Border, Breed Nor Birth by Reynolds, Mack
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.
