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Cheese

4 stages from Latin to English.

Today it means a food made from the pressed curds of milk

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

caseus→*kāsijaz→cyse→cheese

Latin · classical

Columella's farming manual De Re Rustica (c. AD 60) gives step-by-step instructions for curdling milk with rennet and pressing cheese

West Germanic · ancient

borrowed from Roman traders on the Rhine frontier before the Anglo-Saxons left the continent, which is why German has Käse and Dutch kaas

Old English · medieval

in Ælfric's Colloquy (c. 1000), a schoolbook dialogue, the salter boasts that without his salt everyone's butter and cheese would spoil

English · 1300s

"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

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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.