Cheese

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /t͡ʃiːz/

Definitions

1. A dairy product made from pressed milk curds, often aged and available in many varieties with different textures and flavors
2. A food item created through the coagulation of milk proteins, characterized by various flavors and forms, commonly utilized in cooking and as a snack
3. A product resulting from the fermentation and processing of milk, known for its wide range of tastes and uses in culinary applications

Etymology: The English word descends from a Latin one: "cāseus" became Proto-West Germanic "*kāsī" and then Old English "ċīese", a sound-shift that also gave the Dutch "kaas" and German "Käse". Its Romance cousin is Spanish "queso", making the two a doublet: same Latin ancestor, different routes into the languages that speak them. A popular story says the word comes from Persian "čiz", meaning "thing", supposedly picked up by British colonists in India. That claim is doubtful: the term does not appear earliest in Anglo-Indian sources, and it is well recorded in British and Australian sources only from the 1840s onwards, so the Persian link is not established. The word's real ancestry runs back to Latin, not to South Asia.

Synonyms: dairy product, fromage, cheddar