Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having the wit of an ox; dull in intellect; heavy-headed; stupid.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Stupid; dull.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective obsolete stupid; dull

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • The total guff he buys is instantly snapped up by beef-witted city-boy cretins to distract them from the emptiness.

    Four Rooms: how to beat the experts 2011

  • Leon had apparently managed to corner some poor woman and was no doubt sharing whatever dumb-ass theory his beef-witted brain stem was promulgating at the moment.

    Old Mans War 2005

  • The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!

    Troilus and Cressida 2004

  • Even so, my nephew Gerald (the present Duke of Denver) is nothing but a beef-witted English squire, and my niece Mary was flighty and foolish enough till she married a policeman and settled down.

    Unnatural Death Sayers, Dorothy L.Lord Peter 03 1988

  • Never was among such a beef-witted set of addlepates since I was born.

    Austin and His Friends Frederic H. Balfour

  • Purple with Port, beef-witted, tyrannical, intolerant, ignorant, never happy unless when on horseback or drunk, nor looking happy then.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 37, November, 1860 Various

  • Even so, my nephew Gerald (the present Duke of Denver) is nothing but a beef-witted English squire, and my niece Mary was nighty and foolish enough till she married a policeman and settled down.

    Clouds of Witness Sayers, Dorothy L. 1927

  • The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!

    Act II. Scene I. Troilus and Cressida 1914

  • It's for beef-witted squires and blear-eyed people like yourselves -- brutish, callous.

    Gone to Earth Mary Gladys Meredith Webb 1904

  • Then I did meekly remind her of her flirtatious preferences for the young beef-witted London chaps, and her incertitude and disdainful capriciousness towards myself, who was not a beetlehead or an obtuse, but a cultivated native gentleman with high-class university degree, and an oratorical flow of language which was infallibly to land me upon the pinnacle of some tip-top judicial preferment in the Calcutta High Court of Justice.

    Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. F. Anstey 1895

Comments

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  • Mongrel beef-witted Lord. - Troilus and Cressida, II., i., 14

    August 20, 2014

  • Shakespeare's "T&C" is the mother lode of insult. Check out the beginning of Act V, Scene I.

    August 20, 2014

  • (adjective) - (1) Having an inactive brain, thought to be from eating beef.

    --John Phin's Shakespeare Cyclopædia and New Glossary, 1902

    (2) Beef-headed; beef-brained; hence beef-wittedness.

    --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1897

    January 15, 2018