Rif
name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Initialism of reduction in force. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
"According to Norman Seay, executive director of Blacks in Government, an organization of federal employees, the RIFs will have the heaviest impact on the professional, managerial, and technical workers — those making between about $20,000 and $37,000 a year."
- 2 Initialism of risk influencing factor. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
"Any measure can be related to the improvement of a RIF, thus the resulting risk reduction can be assessed."
- 1 To lay off from work due to a reduction in force. transitive
"Our own agency let go 300 positions, affected 120 people who got RIFed, but 1,200 people were affected in the process."
- 2 Alternative letter-case form of RIF. alt-of
"This sense was expressed in a story about a friend who had been laid off (riffed) in a particularly uncaring manner."
- 1 A mountainous region in northern Morocco.
- 2 A former country in North Africa, a republic which existed briefly during the 1920s in what is now northern Morocco.
Example
More examples"The Moroccan regime was very unsettled by the Rif protests."
Etymology
From Arabic الريف (ar-rīf) or Tarifit Arif.
Related phrases
More for "rif"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.