Etymology

cheese

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Today it means: A dairy product made from curdled or cultured milk. Full definition →

Middle English chese ← Old English ċīese ← Proto-West Germanic *kāsī
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cheese · noun, verb1

  1. Latincāseus
  2. Proto-Germanic*kāsijaz
  3. Proto-West Germanic*kāsī
  4. Old Englishċīese
  5. Middle Englishchese
  6. English todaycheese

From Middle English chese, from Anglian Old English ċēse, from Proto-West Germanic *kāsī, borrowed from Latin cāseus. Doublet of queso. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Síes (“cheese”), West Frisian tsiis (“cheese”), Dutch kaas (“cheese”), German Low German Kees (“cheese”), German Käse (“cheese”).

cheese · interjection2

Perhaps an alteration of cheers.

cheese · noun3

  1. Persian · borrowed fromچیز“thing”
  2. English todaycheese

Though commonly claimed to be a borrowing of Persian چیز (čiz, “thing”), the term does not occur earliest in Anglo-Indian sources, but instead is "well recorded in British and Australian sources from the 1840s onwards".

cheese · verb4

Etymology unknown. Possibly an alteration of cease.

cheese · noun, verb5

From cheesy.

Words from the same roots

Latincāseus all →

caseincaseasecasefycaseickasseri

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.