Word.ws English Dictionary

beef up

beef up verb: to strengthen or reinforce; to add substance to.

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.
    • We need to beef up security around the airport.

beef up meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

beef up in Tamil

வலிமைப்படுத்து, பலப்படுத்து, அதிகரி

beef up in Urdu

مزید طاقتور بنانا, اضافہ کرنا

beef up in Bengali

শক্তিশালী করা, জোরালো করা, সারবস্তু যোগ করা

Forms of beef up

third-person singular presentbeefs up
present participlebeefing up
past participlebeefed up
pastbeefed up

Origin of beef up

Originally college slang, from beef (“muscle-power”).

Questions about beef up

What does beef up mean?
Beef up means to strengthen or reinforce; to add substance to.
What is beef up in Tamil?
Beef up in Tamil is வலிமைப்படுத்து, பலப்படுத்து, அதிகரி. See Beef up meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is beef up?
Beef up is a verb.
What is the past tense of beef up?
The past tense of beef up is beefed up.

Words near beef up in the dictionary

  1. beef to the hoof
  2. beef tomato
  3. beef tomatoes
  4. beef trust
  5. beef trusts
  6. beef up
  7. beef wellington
  8. beef Wellingtons
  9. beef-brained
  10. beef-house
  11. beef-houses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beef up (page history and authors); beef up (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); beef up (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); beef up (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-beef up.ogg.

Cite this entry: “beef up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beef_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.