• IPA: /ʃɛf/

chef (plural chefs)

1. The presiding cook in the kitchen of a large household.
   • a. 1845, R. H. Barham, Blasphemer's Warning in Ingoldsby Legends (1847), 3rd Ser., 245

     The Chef's peace of mind was restor'd, And in due time a banquet was placed on the board.

2. The head cook of a restaurant or other establishment.
   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Which Is Both Quarrelsome and Sentimental”, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume I, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849, →OCLC ↗, page 266 ↗:

     The cause of the disturbance, it appeared, was the angry little chef of Sir Francis Clavering's culinary establishment.

3. Any cook.

   My husband is the chef of the household, while I do most of the cleaning.

4. (slang) One who manufactures illegal drugs; a cook.
   • 2013, Mike Power, Drugs 2.0:

     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.

5. (historical) A reliquary in the shape of a head.

• (cook, particularly a learned or skilful one) magirist, magirologist (obs.)

• French: chef cuisinier, chef
• German: Chefkoch, Chefköchin, Küchenchef, Küchenchefin
• Italian: capocuoco
• Portuguese: chef
• Russian: шеф-по́вар
• Spanish: chef

chef (chefs, present participle cheffing; simple past and past participle cheffed)

1. (stative, informal) To work as a chef; to prepare and cook food professionally.
   • 1953, The Deke Quarterly, volume 71, number 4, page 32:

     It was Brick who talked on alumni relations with the active chapters and who cheffed at our steak fry (more of that later) and Mrs. Cowles who took over  […]

   • 1996, Sonora Review, number 31, page 110:

     I cheffed part-time at a nice restaurant in town.

   • 2007, Indianapolis Monthly, page 68:

     He opened Oakleys in 2002, having formerly cheffed at the late, much-missed Something Different and, before that, world-renowned kitchens in Chicago […]

2. (MLE, transitive) To stab with a knife, to shank.

   He got cheffed up proper.