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roast beef

noun

Etymology

From roast + beef. Doublet of rosbif, a reborrowing.

  1. derived from *gʷṓws✻
  2. derived from *gʷōs✻
  3. derived from bōs
  4. derived from buef
  5. derived from beof
  6. inherited from bef
  7. compounded as roast beef — “roast + beef”

Definitions

  1. Beef cooked by roasting.

  2. A cut of beef that has been roasted.

    • I tell the waiter, 'We'll have two roast beefs, one well-done, the other medium rare.'
    • But the cars & trucks held cartons of roast chickens, slabs of cheeses, loaves of bread, racks of hotdogs, case upon case of soft drinks, cases of bottled sparkling water, pies, cakes, roast beefs & baked hams.
    • No delicate little tidbits at these parties; there are buckets of shrimps and oysters, roast beefs and hams and tables of sweets with smiling corporate heads and their lobbyists to greet the guests.

  3. A cut of beef intended for roasting.

    • Two or three times a week I had to deliver fifteen- or twenty-pound roast beefs to delis around the Bronx so that they could cook them and slice them up for sandwiches.
    • We had a freezer up until maybe two years ago. We used to pack a lot of roast beefs.
  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. A portion of roasted beef.

      • Because there, in the middle of the table, among the roast beefs on rolls,[…]

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for roast beef. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA