Word.ws English Dictionary

what's the beef

what's the beef phrase: why are you complaining? What are you complaining about?

Phrase

what's the beef?

  1. (idiomatic, rhetoric) Why are you complaining? What are you complaining about?

Forms of what's the beef

alternative formwhat is the beef

Questions about what's the beef

What does what's the beef mean?
What's the beef means why are you complaining? What are you complaining about?
What part of speech is what's the beef?
What's the beef is a phrase.

Words near what's the beef in the dictionary

  1. what's popping
  2. what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander
  3. what's shaking
  4. what's someone's damage
  5. what's that
  6. what's the beef
  7. what's the betting
  8. what's the big idea
  9. what's the crack
  10. what's the craic
  11. what's the damage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: what's the 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-what's the beef.ogg.

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