Etymograph

English

cheese

Cheese comes from Middle English chese, and goes back to Latin cāseus.

  1. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEcāseus
  2. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*kāsijazreconstructed
  3. Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*kāsīreconstructed
  4. Old Englishc. 450–1150ċīese
  5. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500chese
  6. Englishearliest quotation 1853cheese

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed

Lineage

  1. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEcāseus
  2. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*kāsijazreconstructed
  3. Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*kāsīreconstructed
  4. Old Englishc. 450–1150ċīese
  5. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500chese
  6. Englishearliest quotation 1853cheese

Earliest quotation: 1853, Thomas De Quincey, I Enter the World: “The time was morning; the young lady was not…”

Linked words

through Latin cāseus

casein, queso, quesadilla, 9 more

Another origin of cheese

  1. Proto-Iranianprehistoric (reconstructed)*čišreconstructed
  2. Proto-Iranian, derivedprehistoric (reconstructed)*čiš-čidreconstructed
  3. Persianc. 900–presentچیزčiz‘thing’
  4. Englishtodaycheese

Though commonly claimed to be a borrowing of Persian چیز (čiz, “thing”), the term does not occur earliest in Anglo-Indian sources, but instead is "well recorded in British and Australian sources from the 1840s onwards".uncertain The source flags this step as uncertain.

Today it means

noun A dairy product made from curdled or cultured milk.

Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.

Etymograph / Latin cāseus / cheese

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