beeves

• Rhymes: -iːvz

beeves

1. (archaic or humorous) plural of beef: cows, bulls, or steers.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981, Numbers 31:28:

     And levy a tribute unto the LORD of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep:

   • 1638: Herbert, Sir Thomas, Some yeares travels into divers parts of Asia and Afrique

     ...bells and babies are valuable alſo here, and for which, (or one bead of cornelion) you ſhall have in exchange, Sheep (big tail'd like thoſe in Syria and Perſia) Beeves and Buffaloes, big-bond, fat, and Camel-backt...

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost

     One way a Band select from forage drives

     A herd of Beeves, faire Oxen and faire Kine

     From a fat Meddow ground

   • 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], chapter II, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: Printed for Benj[amin] Motte, […], OCLC 995220039, part I (A Voyage to Lilliput):

     …to deliver in every morning six beeves, forty sheep, and other victuals for my sustenance.

   • 2004, Ginger Hanson, Ransom's Bride, page 106:

     "I heard Texas was horses and beeves."

   • 2012, Alan Massie, In everything we say, there is an echo of 1066:

     "In Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe, a Saxon peasant explains that the oxen, calves, swine and sheep are good Saxons tended by Saxons when alive, but turn into Norman-French when they are ready to be eaten as beef (or beeves), veal, pork and mutton."

   • unknown, Surrey folk rhyme:

     Sutton for mutton, Carshalton for beeves,
     Epsom for whores and Ewel for thieves.