Word.ws English Dictionary

beefcake

/ˈbiːfˌkeɪk/

beefcake noun: imagery of one or more muscular, well-built men.

beefcake: imagery of one or more muscular, well-built men
Image: Riker, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

beefcake (countable and uncountable, plural beefcakes)

  1. (informal, uncountable) Imagery of one or more muscular, well-built men.
    • No look at gay related calendars would be complete without at least a mention of those beefcake spreads. GCN only received one such calendar, the rather disappointing Men of Venice Beach.1982 December 25, J. Grainger, “Gay-by-Gay Calendars at a Glance”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 23, page 9
  2. (countable, informal) Such a male, especially as seen as physically desirable.
    • The audience goes bugshit. The security beefcakes separate them and the host gets between them, talking in a voice that is soothing on top, inciteful beneath.2014, Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes: A Novel, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN
    Synonyms:
    lady-killer, hunk, adonis
  3. (literally) A patty made of beef.
    • Beefcake with Burgundy Mushroom Cream1998, Jessie Tirsch, McGuire's Irish Pub Cookbook, Pelican, page 145

Synonyms of beefcake

Forms of beefcake

pluralbeefcakes
alternative formbeef-cake

Origin of beefcake

From beef + cake. In sense 1, by analogy with cheesecake (“an image of a sexy young woman”).

Words formed from beefcake

Questions about beefcake

What does beefcake mean?
Beefcake means imagery of one or more muscular, well-built men.
What part of speech is beefcake?
Beefcake is a noun.
How do you pronounce beefcake?
Beefcake is pronounced /ˈbiːfˌkeɪk/.
What is the plural of beefcake?
The plural of beefcake is beefcakes.

Words near beefcake in the dictionary

  1. beefarming
  2. beefarms
  3. beefaroni
  4. beefburger
  5. beefburgers
  6. beefcake
  7. beefcakes
  8. beefcakey
  9. beefeater
  10. beefeaters
  11. beefed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beefcake (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-us-ncalif-beefcake2.ogg, en-au-beefcake.ogg.

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