# cheese

Pronunciation: say "CHEEZ" /t͡ʃiz/

## Noun

1. A food made from curdled or cultured milk, pressed and often aged; a particular kind of this food, or a whole round or block of it.
   - Simple: A food made from milk, such as cheddar or brie, or a whole round block of it.
   - _The recipe calls for a generous layer of melted cheese._
   - _Aging gives the cheese a sharper, more complex flavor._
3. Material that is melodramatic, overly sentimental, or clichéd. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: Something so soppy or overdone that it feels fake or corny.
   - _The power ballad piles on so much cheese that it loops back to charming._
   - _Critics dismissed the romance as forgettable cheese._
4. Money, especially in the form of cash. *(slang)*
   - Simple: Money, especially cash that someone can spend.
   - _They flashed their cheese around the club all night._
   - _He picked up extra shifts at the warehouse because he needed more cheese for rent._
5. An important or powerful person, usually in the phrase the big cheese; in dated slang, also the very best or exactly right thing. *(slang)*
   - Simple: An important or powerful person, usually called 'the big cheese'.
   - _Once the big cheese from headquarters arrived, everyone in the office suddenly looked very busy._
   - _He likes to act like the big cheese, but his sister is the one who actually runs the business._
9. The exploitation, or chance to exploit, an unintended video game mechanic.
   - Simple: A cheap trick in a video game that uses a mistake in how the game works.
   - _The latest patch removed most of the cheese players had relied on._
   - _Players quickly found a cheese that lets you beat the final boss without taking any damage._
10. A thick, sweet preserve made from fruit, either firm like quince cheese or soft and spreadable like lemon cheese. *(UK)*
   - Simple: A thick, sweet spread or paste made from fruit, such as quince or lemon.
   - _In many British kitchens, quince cheese is served alongside cold meats and crackers._
   - _The fruit cheese had set firmly enough to be cut into neat squares._
11. A fastball, particularly a hard one thrown with high velocity. *(slang)*
   - Simple: In baseball, a very fast pitch thrown hard past the batter.
   - _He challenged the slugger with pure cheese on a full count._
   - _The catcher called for more cheese with two strikes._
13. A vulgar slang term for smegma, the whitish secretion that collects under the foreskin or around the genitals. *(slang)*
   - Simple: A rude slang word for the white substance that can build up under the foreskin.
   - _After skipping a few showers at camp, he found cheese building up under his foreskin._
   - _He warned his son that cheese gathers under the foreskin without daily washing._

## Interjection

2. Spoken when a photo is being taken, to shape the mouth into a smile.
   - Simple: A word you say for the camera so your mouth makes a smile.
   - _The photographer asked the group to say cheese before the shutter clicked._
   - _Even the grumpy teenagers grinned and said cheese for the family portrait._

## Verb

6. To smile broadly or excessively, as one does for a camera. *(slang)*
   - Simple: To smile very widely, like people do for a photo.
   - _The children cheese wildly whenever a camera points at them._
   - _She cheesed for the photographer, all teeth and forced delight._
7. To anger or irritate someone, usually used together with "off". *(slang, British)*
   - Simple: To make someone angry or annoyed.
   - _Her constant excuses really cheese me off._
   - _He was cheesed off about being left out of the meeting._
8. In games, to win or gain an advantage with a cheap, unsporting or surprise tactic, such as an early all-out attack or a glitch.
   - Simple: In video games, to win using a cheap trick, a glitch or a surprise rush.
   - _Top players cheese the encounter with a trick that skips the hardest phase._
   - _She cheesed her way to the win using a tactic everyone called cheap._
14. To work and prepare milk curds in the early stage of making cheese.
   - Simple: To get milk curds ready so that cheese can be made.

## Verb

12. To stop, or to refrain from doing something. *(dated)*
   - Simple: To stop doing something, or to hold back from it.
   - _Cheese it! Someone's coming up the stairs!_
   - _My great-uncle still says "cheese it" when he wants us to stop fooling around at the dinner table._

## Other meanings

- (noun) A dangerous powdered drug made by combining black tar heroin with crushed Tylenol PM tablets and snorting the result, which resembles grated cheese.
- (noun) In the game of skittles, the heavy wooden piece that players throw to knock down the pins.
- (noun) A pressed mass of pomace (ground apples) built up and squeezed into the shape of a round cheese.
- (noun) A holed pattern introduced into a region of circuitry to decrease its pattern density.
- (verb) To cut holes into a pattern of circuitry in order to decrease its density.
- (noun) The flat, circular, slightly slimy fruit of the dwarf mallow or marshmallow plant.
- (noun) A low curtsey, named for the round, cheese-like shape a girl's skirts take as she sinks down after spinning them outward.

## Origin

**Meanings 1, 3–4, 6, 10–11, 13–14** — Latin cāseus was borrowed into Proto-West Germanic as *kāsī, which became Anglian Old English ċēse and then Middle English chese. Queso is a doublet, and Dutch kaas and German Käse, both meaning "cheese," are related.
**Meaning 2** — Perhaps an alteration of cheers.
**Meaning 5** — A popular explanation traces it to Persian چیز (čiz, "thing"), yet the first records are not Anglo-Indian. The term is instead well documented in British and Australian writing beginning in the 1840s.
**Meanings 7, 12** — Etymology unknown, possibly an alteration of cease.
**Meanings 8–9** — From cheesy.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/cheese (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).