"what's the beef" meaning in English

See what's the beef in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Audio: En-au-what's the beef.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{head|en|phrase|head=what's the beef?}} what's the beef?
  1. (idiomatic, rhetorical question) Why are you complaining? What are you complaining about? Tags: idiomatic, rhetoric Categories (topical): English rhetorical questions Synonyms: what is the beef
    Sense id: en-what's_the_beef-en-phrase-7YHEPzni Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for what's the beef meaning in English (1.4kB)

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase",
        "head": "what's the beef?"
      },
      "expansion": "what's the beef?",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "name": "English rhetorical questions",
          "parents": [
            "Rhetorical questions",
            "Idioms",
            "Questions",
            "Sentences",
            "Figures of speech",
            "Multiword terms",
            "Terms by semantic function",
            "Rhetoric",
            "Lemmas",
            "Language",
            "Communication",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Why are you complaining? What are you complaining about?"
      ],
      "id": "en-what's_the_beef-en-phrase-7YHEPzni",
      "links": [
        [
          "complaining",
          "complaining"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, rhetorical question) Why are you complaining? What are you complaining about?"
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "what is the beef"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "rhetoric"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-what's the beef.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/72/En-au-what%27s_the_beef.ogg/En-au-what%27s_the_beef.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/En-au-what%27s_the_beef.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "what's the beef"
}
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase",
        "head": "what's the beef?"
      },
      "expansion": "what's the beef?",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
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        "English terms with audio links"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Why are you complaining? What are you complaining about?"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "complaining",
          "complaining"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, rhetorical question) Why are you complaining? What are you complaining about?"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "rhetoric"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-what's the beef.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/72/En-au-what%27s_the_beef.ogg/En-au-what%27s_the_beef.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/En-au-what%27s_the_beef.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "what is the beef"
    }
  ],
  "word": "what's the beef"
}

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.