bully beef
noun
Simple meaning
Beef cured or pickled in brine.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
buuleebeefSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈbʊliˈbif
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
British
Beef cured or pickled in brine
british
Pickled or canned beef.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Beef cured or pickled in brine
Used this way, bully beef is a word tied to one variety of English that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. Most speakers understand it but seldom reach for it.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Regional
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Uncommon in everyday speech
Usage note
Mainly used in British English, so it may read as unusual elsewhere.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.