chef
/ʃɛf/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.23 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The head cook of a restaurant or other establishment.
Example Sentences
- "The Chef's peace of mind was restor'd, And in due time a banquet was placed on the board."
- "The cause of the disturbance, it appeared, was the angry little chef of Sir Francis Clavering's culinary establishment."
- "My partner is the chef of the household, while I do most of the cleaning."
- "The videos are easy to follow — and short. His style is consistent and effective; his recipes have built a microcosm of predominantly young, first-time chefs with a penchant for TikTok-able entertainment. “I’m just a regular guy, and not a chef at all,” Nguyen said."
- "But trying to stop all the nation's meth chefs makes as much sense as building a wall along the Mexican border."
- "Owsley Stanley, the world's most exacting and prolific LSD chef who supplied the majority of America's West Coast with LSD in the 1960s, claimed he made so much acid not because he wanted to change the world, but rather because it was almost impossible not to make vast quantities of the drug once the synthesis had been embarked upon."
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from French chef (from the positions of chef d'office and chef de cuisine), from Old French chief (“head, leader”) (English chief), from Vulgar Latin capus (“head”) (from which also captain, chieftain), from Latin caput (“head”) (possibly related to English cap (“head covering”)). Doublet of cape, capo, caput, and chief through Latin, and head and Howth through Proto-Indo-European.
Origin
- Source language: Old French