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A teenager I know was recently at a weekend party up at a lake. Evidently two of the girls there had an altercation and one pushed the other off the wharf and into the water. This was reported to me in the following terms:
一个我所认识的十来岁的孩子最近去了一个在湖边举行的周末派对。显然，那里的两个女孩子互相有了争执，所以其中一个人把另一个人从泊船的地方推下了水。我的那位小朋友用了如下的词汇向我报道了这个小事件：
“Suzie and Nancy really had beef.”
“苏茜和南希真的打了一架（Suzie and Nancyreally had beef）。”
This was a new one on me.
对我来说，这可是一个全新的用法。
For a second I wondered if they had shared a nice steak.
在那一刻，我甚至还纳闷，是不是这两个女孩共享了一份美味的牛排。
Good word beef; interesting history.
Beef的确是个好词，而且它还有一段有趣的历史。
Cows have been around people for some time. Long enough that there was an Indo-European word for cow gwou.
牛作为人类的家畜已经有相当的长一段时间了。这段时间很长，以至于在印欧语系里就有个对应于cow的单词gwou。
This reached us as cow via Old English. But while it was getting here it was also getting to Latin by a parallel route to arrive there as bov. By the time William the Conqueror arrived in England in 1066 the French had turned the Latin into beuf.
随着时间的推移，这个词透过古英语进入到我们目前的语言，成为了单词cow。然而，就在单词gwou融入进到古英语（成为一开始的cū——译注）的时候，它也同时融入到了拉丁语中，成为单词bov。到了1066年征服者威廉抵达英格兰的时候，随之而来的法语把这个拉丁语单词变成了beuf。
So there was William looking out the window of his castle and in the adjacent field he saw an animal he’d call a beuf. While out in the field the guy with the pitchfork looked at the same beast and thought it was a cow.
因此，那个时候就出现了如下的情况——国王威廉从他城堡的窗户向外望去，在一块邻近的地里，他看到了一头他称之为beuf的动物；而在那块地里，一个手握干草叉的农夫也望着同样一头动物，心里想着，这是一头cow。
Since William and his court spent more time with beuf after it had been sliced up into steak, the word for the meat of this animal took on the name beef. But the guy with the pitchfork still had to manage these ponderous creatures and so the Old English name stuck to the live versions.
由于威廉和他的宫廷成员与beuf相处了更长时间——beuf被片成牛排，烹饪后，端到他们的餐桌上——这个对应于上述动物肉类的单词就被称作beef。而那个手持干草叉的老兄却仍然得照料这些体态笨拙的动物，因此古英语单词cow仍旧保留了它原来鲜活的叫法。
It took a little while for the French word to creep into writings that we can now accepted（？译注） as English. French arrived as the official language of England in 1066 but it was almost the year 1300 before beef has its first citation as an English word.
又过了挺长一段时间，法语单词beef才成功地博得了广泛的认可，混进了英语书面语——如今，我们已经把它看作是一个英语单词了。法语在1066年成为英格兰的官方语言，但是，几乎到了公元1300年，作为英语单词的beef才第一次有了书面引证。
So that explains why I thought these two girls were having steak. But how did my teenage friend get to understand the word beef to mean “fight”?
上述的这段语言发展历程解释了，我为什么觉得那两个女孩子共享了一份牛排。不过，我的那个少年朋友到底是如何把单词beef理解为“打斗（fight）”的呢？
Well, in 1869 Harper’s Magazine reported on the exploitation of some buffalo for their meat and used the word beef in its article with a meaning of “slaughter.”
原来，在1869年，一期《哈泼斯杂志》对于野牛牛肉的开发进行了报道。在文中，作者使用单词beef来表示“屠宰（slaughter）”的意思。
The buffalo were to be beefed.
这群野牛将要被屠宰（beefed）。
The OED reports that this sense fed a slang expression where to beef someone was to knock them down; showing first in writing in 1926.
《牛津英语词典》也提到，这层意思也促成了一种俚语表述方式——要beef某人就是说把这个人打倒；这个用法在1926年首见于书面语。
I don’t believe that this directly fed into my teenage friend’s use of the word beef to mean “fight” but in 1888 and 1889 we have the first two citations for beef meaning “to complain,” as in “what’s your beef.”
我并不相信，这个解释直接为我那位少年朋友把beef用作“打斗”的说法提供了依据。不过，在1888年和1889年里，含有“抱怨”意思的beef首先出现在了两条引证中，比如“你有什么抱怨（what’s your beef）”。
This is as far as my understanding of the word beef goes; which is to say I’m right up to date with the jargon of 120 years ago.
以上就是我在力所能及的范围内，对单词beef所做的理解；也就是说，到目前为止，我将这个（意指“打斗”的）行话追溯到120年前的论述是站得住脚的。
But Urbandictionary does have entries that support my teenage friend’s use of beef meaning to argue or fight. The implication is that this is from gangster rap and likely evolved from the “complaint” meaning to also encompass a meaning of “grudge” as well as “fight.”
不过，对于我的少年朋友使用beef来表示“争吵（argue）”和“打斗（fight）”的说法，城市字典里的相关条目的确为此提供了支持。其中就提到，此类用法源于街头的黑帮说唱歌，而且它似乎也是从“抱怨（complaint）”的意思发展而来的，到最后还包含有“怨恨（grudge）”和“打斗（fight）”的意思。