beef

1. 1.

   complain

   “What was he hollering about?”

   Synonymsgripebitchgrousecrabsquawkbellyacheholler

   Broadercomplain

Other forms of beef

plural

beeves

past tense

beefed·

present participle

beefing·

third person

beefs·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about beef

What does beef mean?

beef means "cattle that are reared for their meat". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in beef?

beef has 1 syllable: beef. In IPA it is /ˈbif/.

What is another word for beef?

Close synonyms include beef cattle, boeuf, gripe, kick, bitch. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is beef a common word?

beef is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.