baby beef

noun

1. a young beef animal that has been fattened for marketing when 12 to 20 months old.
2. the meat of a baby beef.

Word History and Origins

Origin of baby beef¹

An Americanism dating back to 1885–90

Example Sentences

That a girl may make five dollars a day in a canning club during the summer, or a boy win a prize of one hundred dollars for feeding a baby beef, is one of the lesser advantages of the great national movement which has caught the imaginative enthusiasm of the Young Generation.

From Project Gutenberg

Monday, December 13, 2010; 6:18 PM Both of my sons have been voracious carnivores from the get-go, devouring baby beef and chicken purees with gusto before graduating to gnawing spare ribs clean, inhaling full pots of meatballs and downing two to three hot dogs in a sitting.

From Washington Post

There Abrams raised baby beef, ran a trap line for skunk and muskrat, patched together a wheezing model T and learned to shoot by drilling holes with his .22 through tin cans tossed up by his father.

From Time Magazine Archive

"Baby Beef," he failed to show it.

From Time Magazine Archive

Born in Feeding Hills, Mass., the son of a repairman on the Boston & Albany railroad, Creighton Abrams grew up learning to drill tin cans with a rifle, raising baby beef as a 4-H farm boy, and driving around in his Model T. In high school he was both an outstanding student and captain of a championship football team that went unscored upon in his last season.

From Time Magazine Archive