Cheese
nounA solid food made from the pressed and ripened curds of milk.
How to spell cheese
6 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce cheese
What does cheese mean?
- nounA solid food made from the pressed and ripened curds of milk.
Cheese in a sentence
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She grated a block of mature cheese over the pasta.
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The market stall sold local cheese alongside fresh bread.
Where does cheese come from?
Language of origin: Latin
Cheese descends from the Old English cīese or cēse, the everyday word for the firm food made from curdled milk. That word was borrowed very early, before the Anglo-Saxons even reached Britain, from the Latin caseus, which simply meant cheese. The Latin term spread across the Germanic languages of the Roman frontier, which is why German has Käse and Dutch has kaas, all from the same Latin source. The spelling settled with the soft 'ch' sound and a long 'ee' written as 'ee', followed by a silent 'e' at the end. The familiar 'say cheese' for photographs is a modern habit, since the word stretches the mouth into something resembling a smile.
How the word is built
- chees- (from Old English cīese, curdled milk food)
- -e (silent final letter)
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