beef up
phrasal verb
beefed up; beefing up; beefs up
informal
: to add weight, strength, or power to (something)
Security around the city will be beefed up during the event.
a politician looking to beef his image up
Examples of beef up in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Mayor Brandon Johnson is scrambling to beef up his Black bona fides.
—
Laura Washington, Chicago Tribune, 28 May 2025
To be sure, buybacks are a bad idea if a company takes on excessive debt to fund them, or if the buyback siphons off cash that would be better used to beef up the company’s core business.
—John Dorfman, Forbes.com, 26 May 2025
As the case advances, Character Technologies will have a chance to beef up the First Amendment claims, perhaps by better explaining how chatbot outputs are similar to other cases involving non-human speakers.
—ArsTechnica, 22 May 2025
Anthropic has also beefed up its cybersecurity, so that Claude’s underlying neural network is protected against theft attempts by non-state actors.
—Billy Perrigo, Time, 22 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for beef up
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Laura Washington, Chicago Tribune, 28 May 2025
To be sure, buybacks are a bad idea if a company takes on excessive debt to fund them, or if the buyback siphons off cash that would be better used to beef up the company’s core business.
—John Dorfman, Forbes.com, 26 May 2025
As the case advances, Character Technologies will have a chance to beef up the First Amendment claims, perhaps by better explaining how chatbot outputs are similar to other cases involving non-human speakers.
—ArsTechnica, 22 May 2025
Anthropic has also beefed up its cybersecurity, so that Claude’s underlying neural network is protected against theft attempts by non-state actors.
—Billy Perrigo, Time, 22 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for beef up
Cite this Entry
“Beef up.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beef%20up. Accessed 1 Jun. 2025.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share