Word.ws English Dictionary

bum beef

bum beef noun: a criminal charge or accusation considered unfair, false, or without merit, especially by the accused.

Noun

bum beef (plural bum beefs)

  1. (US, slang) A criminal charge or accusation considered unfair, false, or without merit, especially by the accused.
    • “He can’t deny the murder of his wife.” “That was a bum beef, Arnie.”1962, Ross Macdonald, The Zebra-Striped Hearse
    Synonyms:
    bum rap
  2. (US, slang) A disciplinary charge or punishment considered unfair by the prisoner.

Synonyms of bum beef

Forms of bum beef

pluralbum beefs

Origin of bum beef

From bum + beef, with bum in the sense of “false, unfair, invalid” and beef in the slang sense of “a criminal charge”.

Questions about bum beef

What does bum beef mean?
Bum beef means a criminal charge or accusation considered unfair, false, or without merit, especially by the accused.
What part of speech is bum beef?
Bum beef is a noun.
What is the plural of bum beef?
The plural of bum beef is bum beefs.

Words near bum beef in the dictionary

  1. Bulzeștii de Sus
  2. bum
  3. bum around
  4. bum bag
  5. bum bags
  6. bum beef
  7. bum boy
  8. bum boys
  9. bum bum
  10. bum burp
  11. bum burps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bum beef (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.

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