"beef up" meaning in English

See beef up in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: en-au-beef up.ogg [Australia] Forms: beefs up [present, singular, third-person], beefing up [participle, present], beefed up [participle, past], beefed up [past]
Etymology: Originally college slang, from beef (“muscle-power”). Etymology templates: {{m|en|beef||muscle-power}} beef (“muscle-power”) Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} beef up (third-person singular simple present beefs up, present participle beefing up, simple past and past participle beefed up)
  1. (slang, transitive) To strengthen or reinforce; to add substance to. Tags: slang, transitive Related terms: beef, beefed out, beefed up, beef out, beefy
    Sense id: en-beef_up-en-verb-8W6SegGz Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English phrasal verbs with particle (up)

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for beef up meaning in English (1.8kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "beef",
        "3": "",
        "4": "muscle-power"
      },
      "expansion": "beef (“muscle-power”)",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Originally college slang, from beef (“muscle-power”).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "beefs up",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "beefing up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "beefed up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "beefed up",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "beef up (third-person singular simple present beefs up, present participle beefing up, simple past and past participle beefed up)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English phrasal verbs with particle (up)",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We need to beef up security around the airport.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To strengthen or reinforce; to add substance to."
      ],
      "id": "en-beef_up-en-verb-8W6SegGz",
      "links": [
        [
          "strengthen",
          "strengthen"
        ],
        [
          "reinforce",
          "reinforce"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(slang, transitive) To strengthen or reinforce; to add substance to."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "beef"
        },
        {
          "word": "beefed out"
        },
        {
          "word": "beefed up"
        },
        {
          "word": "beef out"
        },
        {
          "word": "beefy"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang",
        "transitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-beef up.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/df/En-au-beef_up.ogg/En-au-beef_up.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/En-au-beef_up.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "beef up"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "beef",
        "3": "",
        "4": "muscle-power"
      },
      "expansion": "beef (“muscle-power”)",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Originally college slang, from beef (“muscle-power”).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "beefs up",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "beefing up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "beefed up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "beefed up",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "beef up (third-person singular simple present beefs up, present participle beefing up, simple past and past participle beefed up)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "beef"
    },
    {
      "word": "beefed out"
    },
    {
      "word": "beefed up"
    },
    {
      "word": "beef out"
    },
    {
      "word": "beefy"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrasal verbs",
        "English phrasal verbs with particle (up)",
        "English slang",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English transitive verbs",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We need to beef up security around the airport.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To strengthen or reinforce; to add substance to."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "strengthen",
          "strengthen"
        ],
        [
          "reinforce",
          "reinforce"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(slang, transitive) To strengthen or reinforce; to add substance to."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang",
        "transitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-beef up.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/df/En-au-beef_up.ogg/En-au-beef_up.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/En-au-beef_up.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "beef up"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.