Cheeses

How to spell cheeses

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cheeses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cheeses mean?

1. nounDifferent kinds or portions of the firm or soft food made from pressed milk curds.

Cheeses in a sentence

• The deli counter displayed dozens of imported cheeses from France and Italy.

• We paired three soft cheeses with crackers and grapes for the party.

Where does cheeses come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word goes back to the Old English ciese, itself borrowed very early from the Latin caseus, which simply meant 'cheese' or 'curdled milk'. That same Latin root spread across the continent and explains why German has Kase and Welsh has caws, all cousins of the English word. The spelling drifted over the centuries from ciese to chese before settling on the modern 'cheese', with the plural and verb forms adding -es. Interestingly, the romance languages took a different fork: Italian formaggio and French fromage come instead from the Latin phrase caseus formaticus, 'cheese made in a mould'. The simple doubled middle, the silent visual rhythm of -ee- followed by -ses, is the only thing that trips writers up, and even then rarely.

How the word is built

• cheese (from Latin caseus: curdled milk)
• -es (plural/third-person ending)