cheese
/t͡ʃiːz/
"cheese" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cheese” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #2,617 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #2,617
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A dairy product made from curdled or cultured milk.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cheese |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /t͡ʃiːz/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #2,617 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “cheese” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cheese is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /t͡ʃiːz/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,617 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
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
- 1A dairy product made from curdled or cultured milk.
- 2Any particular variety of cheese.
- 3A piece of cheese, especially one moulded into a large round shape during manufacture.
- 4A thick variety of jam (fruit preserve), as distinguished from a thinner variety (sometimes called jelly)
- 5A substance resembling cream cheese, such as lemon cheese
- 6That which is melodramatic, overly emotional, or cliché, i.e. cheesy.
- 7Money.
- 8In skittles, the roughly ovoid object that is thrown to knock down the skittles.
- 9A fastball.
- 10A dangerous mixture of black tar heroin and crushed Tylenol PM tablets. The resulting powder resembles grated cheese and is snorted.
- 11Smegma.
- 12Holed pattern of circuitry to decrease pattern density.
- 13A mass of pomace, or ground apples, pressed together in the shape of a cheese.
- 14The flat, circular, mucilaginous fruit of dwarf mallow (Malva rotundifolia) or marshmallow (Althaea officinalis).
- 15A 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.
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”).
Antonyms
This word in other languages
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.
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"?
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Using “cheese”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-H-E-E-S-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /t͡ʃiːz/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “chose” - see the side-by-side comparison. cheese vs chose
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.