Cheese.

Something choice (Anglo-Saxon, ceos-an, to choose; German, kiescn; French, choisir). Chaucer says, “To cheese whether she wold him marry or no.”

“Now thou might cheese

How thou couetist [covetest] to calme, now thou

Knowist all mi names.”

P. Ploughman’s Vision.

It is not the cheese. Not the right thing; not what I should choose.

He is quite the cheese or just the cheese—i.e. quite the thing. By a double refinement we get the slang varieties, That’s prime Stilton, or double Gloʹster—i.e. slap bang up.

· ·

Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.