cheese

/t͡ʃiːz/

//t͡ʃiːz// noun

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

"cheese" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“cheese” has 8 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #2,617. The variants make it a useful spelling check.

#2,617
frequency rank, English
5,599
“C” headwords
8
tracked misspellings
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A dairy product made from curdled or cultured milk.

Corpus desk

Index EN-cheese · cheese · English

cheese · rank #2,617 · 8 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #2,617
  • LEN-LONG 6 letters
  • VOW-3 3 vowels
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-MID 8 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 5,599
  • PHOTO-FINISH chat

Nearest frequency peer: chat (-1 rank slots)

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Rank peers near misspelling magnet “cheese”

Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword

corpus weight

What this shows “cheese” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

cheese vs chose
67% similar
cheese vs chest
67% similar
cheese vs chess
67% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for cheese
PropertyValue
Headwordcheese
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
IPA/t͡ʃiːz/
Letters6
Frequency rank#2,617
Misspellings tracked8
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “cheese”

Word frequency stretches from the small set of words we reach for constantly (left) out to the long tail barely used once in a while (right).cheeselands here:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Scale is logarithmic (each tick is 10× rarer). Same rarity band neighbours include “chat” (#2,616), “chemical” (#2,618), “category” (#2,615). Among 5,599 “C” headwords, “cheese” is #2,617. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

A misspelling magnet

The generator records 8 spelling variants around cheese (IPA /t͡ʃiːz/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #2,617 among 5,599 “C” headwords. Wiktionary lists 15 senses, so context still picks the gloss.

Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for cheese, with forms such as "ccheese", "cehese", and "cheees". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "chose", "chest", "chess", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Latin cāseusbor. Proto-Germanic *kāsijaz Proto-West Germanic *kāsī Old English ċīese Middle English chese English cheese From Middle English chese, from Anglian Old English ċīese, from Proto-West Germanic *kāsī, borrowed from Latin cāseus. Do… The correct English form is cheese, spelled C-H-E-E-S-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    A dairy product made from curdled or cultured milk.
  2. 2
    Any particular variety of cheese.
  3. 3
    A piece of cheese, especially one moulded into a large round shape during manufacture.
  4. 4
    A thick variety of jam (fruit preserve), as distinguished from a thinner variety (sometimes called jelly)
  5. 5
    A substance resembling cream cheese, such as lemon cheese
  6. 6
    That which is melodramatic, overly emotional, or cliché, i.e. cheesy.
  7. 7
    Money.
  8. 8
    In skittles, the roughly ovoid object that is thrown to knock down the skittles.
  9. 9
    A fastball.
  10. 10
    A dangerous mixture of black tar heroin and crushed Tylenol PM tablets. The resulting powder resembles grated cheese and is snorted.
  11. 11
    Smegma.
  12. 12
    Holed pattern of circuitry to decrease pattern density.
  13. 13
    A mass of pomace, or ground apples, pressed together in the shape of a cheese.
  14. 14
    The flat, circular, mucilaginous fruit of dwarf mallow (Malva rotundifolia) or marshmallow (Althaea officinalis).
  15. 15
    A low curtsey; so called on account of the cheese shape assumed by a woman's dress when she stoops after extending the skirts by a rapid gyration.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how cheese appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. He had a gloating expression on his face, and was perseveringly rolling a large cheese along the middle of the road.
  2. In the tomographic images of the 30-day-old cheeses, the gantry had to be removed with image processing techniques: first, the binarised image (grey level larger than 10⁴) was eroded with a disk of three pixels.

Etymology

Etymology tree Latin cāseusbor. Proto-Germanic *kāsijaz Proto-West Germanic *kāsī Old English ċīese Middle English chese English cheese From Middle English chese, from Anglian Old English ċīese, from Proto-West Germanic *kāsī, borrowed from Latin cāseus. Doublet of queso. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Síes (“cheese”), West Frisian tsiis (“cheese”), Dutch kaas (“cheese”), German Low German Kees (“cheese”), German Käse (“cheese”).

Synonyms

moneycheesefromage

Antonyms

fill

This word in other languages

queso(Español)fromage(Français)Käse(Deutsch)queijo(Português)

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as:

  • ccheese
  • cehese
  • cheees
  • cheesse
  • chese
  • chesee
  • chheese
  • hceese

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of cheese - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.

ccheese1cehese2cheees2cheesse1chese1chesee2chheese1hceese2
Edit distance from "cheese"

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "cheese"?
"cheese" is spelled C-H-E-E-S-E. The IPA pronunciation is /t͡ʃiːz/.
What does "cheese" mean?
As a noun, "cheese" means: A dairy product made from curdled or cultured milk.
What words are commonly confused with "cheese"?
"cheese" is commonly confused with "chose", "chest", "chess". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "cheese"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "cheese" is /t͡ʃiːz/. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What is the origin of the word "cheese"?
Etymology tree Latin cāseusbor. Proto-Germanic *kāsijaz Proto-West Germanic *kāsī Old English ċīese Middle English chese English cheese From Middle English chese, from Anglian Old English ċīese, from Proto-West Germanic *kāsī, borrowed from Latin ... See the full etymology section above for more details.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar English words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "cheese", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked English headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

bottle#2,613detail#2,621assume#2,611Andrew#2,610

Similar misspelling depth

Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (8 here; floor ≥5).

bunch8 variantsshift8 variantstight8 variantsunlike8 variants

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list