beef
A1Meanings
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1
verb
to complain
If you beef one more time I'm going to flat out say no.
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2
noun
The meat from cattle or other bovines; especially, that from adults.
I love eating beef.
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3
noun
Bovine animals.
However, there were millions of head of beef roaming the plains of Texas.
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4
noun
A bovine (cow or bull) being raised for its meat.
Do you want to raise beeves?
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5
noun
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)
He's got beef over what you said.
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6
noun
A criminal charge.
I'm in prison for attempting to kill two police officers (a genuine bum beef) and am alleged to be a part of a group of mad bombers.
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7
noun
Fibrous calcite or limestone, especially when occurring in a jagged layer between shales in Dorset.
Clays, shales, sands, red and green marls, and alum shale, with occasional layers of "beef" (fibrous carbonate of lime) […] Chief "Beef" Beds, Dark (alum) shales with "beef" and selenite, beds of limestone, and layers of perished shells. Cyrena and Cyrides. Corbula Beds. Layers of shelly limestone, shale, alum shale, and marl, with "beef" and selenite.
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8
verb
To complain.
“Don't you like the Red Room?” “The Red Room!” I gathered from his manner that he had not come to beef about his sleeping accommodation.
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 bovem (“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 Sug…