beef
n. countablen. a complaint or argument you have with someone. It's an informal way to talk about a problem or disagreement between people.
n. a complaint, grudge, or dispute between people; informal in register and used primarily in colloquial speech.
He has a beef with the new manager.
My main beef with the proposal is that it doesn't address the long-term costs.
The long-standing beef between the two artists fueled years of lyrical battles, providing endless material for fans and critics to dissect.
PIE word *gʷṓws From Middle English beef, bef, beof, borrowed from Anglo-Norman beof, Old French buef, boef (“ox”) (modern French bœuf); from Latin bōs (“ox”), from Proto-Italic gʷōs, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European gʷṓws. Doublet of cow. Beef in the sense of “a grudge, argument” was originally an American slang expression: * attested as a verb “to complain” in 1888: “He'll beef an' kick like a steer an' let on he won't never wear 'em.”— New York World, 13 May; * attested as a noun “complaint, protest, grievance, sim.” in 1899: “He made a Horrible Beef because he couldn't get Loaf Sugar for his Coffee.”—Fables in Slang (1900) by George Ade, page 80. As to the possible origin of this American usage, it has been suggested that it can be traced back to a British expression for “alarm”, first recorded in 1725: "BEEF 'to alarm, as To cry beef upon us; they have discover'd us, and are in Pursuit of us". The term "beef" in this context would be a Cockney rhyming slang of thief. However, the continuous use of a similar expression, including its assumed semantic shift to 'complaint' in the United States from the 1880s onwards, needs further clarification.
Commonly used in the construction 'to have a beef with' someone or something.