24/08/2026
Cheese has snuck into more languages than you'd think, not just as food, but as metaphor.
In English, "big cheese" started life as an Indian word: colonial-era Anglo-Indians borrowed the word chiz ("thing"), and it slowly morphed into the word cheese back in London. The French use cheese to describe overreacting ("making a whole cheese of it") and also to describe the unhurried chatter after a meal ("between the pear and the cheese").
Save this for your next cheese-board trivia round!
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