Other forms: chefs, cheves
A chef is a professional cook, especially the one in charge of a restaurant kitchen. Head chef, sous chef, the chef came out to say hello.
The difference from cook is about training and setting: anybody who cooks is a cook, and a chef does it professionally. The word is French and keeps its French sound — SHEF — and the kitchen ranks are French too: chef de partie, sous chef, commis. Note that chef never means the owner in English, though the French word means chief, and that celebrity chef is now a job description in its own right.
1nounchefA professional cook, especially one in charge of a kitchen.
“The chef trained in Lyon and came back to open this.”
Patternhead / sous / pastry chef · chef de partie · a chef's knife / hat / special · a celebrity chef
chef is a profession.
Also accepted in games: cook
CHef → the CH is said SH, like the kitchen going quiet
When the chef tastes the soup, the whole kitchen goes shh — and that is how the word starts: the ch is said sh.
French chef means head or chief, from Latin caput, a head — the same word behind captain, chapter and cattle. The full French title is chef de cuisine, head of the kitchen, and English kept only the first word, so a chef is literally just a boss.
Proto-Indo-European
*kap-
Latin
caput — head
Vulgar Latin
capus — head
Old French
chief — head, leader
French
chef
English, today
chef
Built from
French chef (from the positions of chef d'office and chef de cuisine), from Old French chief (“head, leader”) (English a doublet of chief), from Vulgar Latin capus (“head”) (from which also captain, chieftain), from Latin caput (“head”) (possibly related to English cap (“head covering”)). a doublet of cape and capo and caput and chief through Latin, and a doublet of head and Howth through Proto-Indo-European.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA