cheese

Where does the word "cheese" come from? It comes from Latin caseus, passing through West Germanic and Old English before entering English (1300s).

Cheese’s story begins in Latin: caseus meant “cheese.” Columella's farming manual De Re Rustica (c. AD 60) gives step-by-step instructions for curdling milk with rennet and pressing cheese. By ancient, the word had taken hold in West Germanic as *kāsijaz. Borrowed from Roman traders on the Rhine frontier before the Anglo-Saxons left the continent, which is why German has Käse and Dutch kaas. From there it passed into Old English as cyse by medieval. In Ælfric's Colloquy (c. 1000), a schoolbook dialogue, the salter boasts that without his salt everyone's butter and cheese would spoil. It reached English by 1300s as cheese. A Somerset pipe roll of 1170 is often cited as recording Henry II's purchase of over 10,000 pounds of Cheddar cheese. Today, cheese means a food made from the pressed curds of milk.

1. Stage 1 · Latin · classical caseus "cheese", Columella's farming manual De Re Rustica (c. AD 60) gives step-by-step instructions for curdling milk with rennet and pressing cheese.
2. Stage 2 · West Germanic · ancient *kāsijaz "cheese", borrowed from Roman traders on the Rhine frontier before the Anglo-Saxons left the continent, which is why German has Käse and Dutch kaas.
3. Stage 3 · Old English · medieval cyse "cheese", in Ælfric's Colloquy (c. 1000), a schoolbook dialogue, the salter boasts that without his salt everyone's butter and cheese would spoil.
4. Stage 4 · English · 1300s cheese "food made from pressed curds", a Somerset pipe roll of 1170 is often cited as recording Henry II's purchase of over 10,000 pounds of Cheddar cheese.