beef

«beef» in Mova's school dictionary: The meat from a cow, bull or ox — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (beef, uncountable; a beef, beefs — complaint); verb (beef up, beefs, beefed)

meaning for a pupil

1) The meat from a cow, bull or ox. tree →

2) (slang) A complaint or a quarrel with someone (What's your beef? He has beef with me). tree →

3) (informal) Muscle or strength. tree →

4) To beef up: to make something stronger or bigger. tree →

5) (informal) To beef: to complain. tree →

sense in the lessons

In everyday life: beef burgers, roast beef, minced beef. In science and food lessons: beef comes from cattle and gives protein. In slang, «beef» is an argument between people. Phrases: beef up, what's your beef?, roast beef.

examples

• We had roast beef for Sunday lunch. tree →
• Beef comes from cows. tree →
• The burger is made of minced beef. tree →
• What's your beef with me? (slang) tree →
• The two rappers have had beef for ages. (slang) tree →
• The team beefed up its defence. tree →
• Stop beefing about the homework! (informal) tree →
• I hate cow-beef; it is not tender enough for me. tree →

note

Meat sense is uncountable: some beef. Pork is from pigs, lamb from sheep, beef from cattle. The slang plural for complaints is «beefs». A «beefy» person is big and strong.

In the corpora

• and threescore and twelve thousand beeves,
• And the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the LORD'S tribute was threescore and twelve.
• and thirty and six thousand beeves,

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «beef» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.