CHEESE


Meaning of CHEESE in English

I. ˈchēz noun

( -s )

Usage: often attributive

Etymology: Middle English chese, from Old English cēse; akin to Old High German & Old Saxon kāsi; all from a prehistoric West Germanic word borrowed from Latin caseus; akin to Old Slavic kvasŭ sour dough, Old English hwatherian to foam, Old Norse hvethnir milker, Gothic hwatho foam, Sanskrit kvathati he boils

1.

a. : curd that has been separated from whey, consolidated by molding for soft cheese or subjected to pressure for hard cheese, and ripened for use as a food

b. : a cake of this food typically in the shape of a wheel or of a flat cylinder

c. : cheddar

2. : something shaped like a cheese: as

a. : a mass of pomace in a cider press

b. : a package in which yarn is commonly wound

c. : a batch of raw fiber stock as it leaves the dyeing kettle

d. : skittle ball

e. : a compressed mass of tobacco to be cut up by machine into smoking or chewing tobacco

3. : something like cheese in texture (as soft wood or paraffin wax saturated with oil) or odor — often used as a generalized term of disapproval

surveys, generally speaking, are the cheese — Atlantic Bulletin

a lawyer simply has to convince the poor cheeses on the jury — Sinclair Lewis

4. : dwarf mallow ; also : the flat fruits of the dwarf mallow or of the cheeseflower — usually used in plural

II. transitive verb

( -ed/-ing/-s )

1. : to form (a rope end) into a tight neat coil — usually used with down

2. : to wind (yarn) onto a cheese : spool

III. transitive verb

( -ed/-ing/-s )

Etymology: origin unknown

slang : to leave off : stop

- cheese it

IV. noun

( -s )

Etymology: perhaps from Urdu chīz thing, from Persian

1. slang : something first-rate

this car is certainly the cheese

2. slang : someone important : boss

thought himself a bit of a cheese

Webster's New International English Dictionary.      Новый международный словарь английского языка Webster.