entry
cheese
/tʃiːz/Curdled milk pressed into a food
From Latin, borrowed into West Germanic cheese (cheese).
from Latin caseus "cheese" (source of Italian cacio , Spanish queso , Irish caise , Welsh caws ). This is of unknown...
+1 more sourcefrom Middle English chese
Word Ancestry
from Latin caseus "cheese" (source of Italian cacio , Spanish queso , Irish caise , Welsh caws ). This is of unknown...
+1 more sourcefrom Middle English chese
Long before anyone worried about artisanal rind or the correct wine pairing, Latin speakers were calling this pressed, tangy food cāseus. English inherited it through West Germanic and Old English cyse, while Spanish queso and Italian cacio took their own paths from the same Latin word—so a cheese board quietly contains a small map of Europe. The ultimate origin is uncertain: one theory connects it with an ancient root associated with fermenting or turning sour, while another suspects that Latin simply borrowed the word from a language we can no longer identify. By the 1520s, English speakers were already joking that the moon was made of “green cheese,” and by 1930 photographers were telling people to say cheese, probably because the long ee sound pulls the mouth into a smile. A humble curd thus became both a ridiculous lunar material and a command to manufacture happiness on demand.
The Story
Long before anyone worried about artisanal rind or the correct wine pairing, Latin speakers were calling this pressed, tangy food cāseus. English inherited it through West Germanic and Old English cyse, while Spanish queso and Italian cacio took their own paths from the same Latin word—so a cheese board quietly contains a small map of Europe. The ultimate origin is uncertain: one theory connects it with an ancient root associated with fermenting or turning sour, while another suspects that Latin simply borrowed the word from a language we can no longer identify. By the 1520s, English speakers were already joking that the moon was made of “green cheese,” and by 1930 photographers were telling people to say cheese, probably because the long ee sound pulls the mouth into a smile. A humble curd thus became both a ridiculous lunar material and a command to manufacture happiness on demand.
Modern Usage
An intensely meaningful or oddly philosophical subject; also a late-night food in user-generated slang
Notable References
- Urban Dictionary entries describing cheese as the essence of the human condition and as food eaten at 2 AM
Kin & Kindred
From 'cheese'·cheese, curdled milk
Cognates
Related words in other languages
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Etymonline
Urban Dictionary
Wikipedia
Wiktionary