cheeser

From Middle English cheser; equivalent to cheese +‎ -er. The smile is said to resemble the uniform white coloration of cheese, or possibly related to the phrase say cheese.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃizɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃiːzə/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

cheeser (plural cheesers)

1. Someone who makes or sells cheese.
   • 1899, John Luchsinger, The History of a Great Industry, page 230:

     With Swiss farmers, Swiss cheesers, Swiss merchants, the best of grasses and water, and intelligent management, it cannot fail to produce an article which has reduced importation of foreign cheese to a minimum.

   • 1961, Richard Condon, A Talent for Loving: Or, The Great Cowboy Race, page 22:

     We took off our long, white cheesers' coats and hung them on the knobs of Edam, which is a Dutch cheese made of cows' milk with about forty per cent fat content and bright red outside.

   • 1964, Thomas Armstrong, The Face of a Madonna, link:

     […] heard the cries of poultry dealers, cheesers, and medicine men.

   • 1988, Beat Sterchi, translated by Michael Hofmann, Cow, page 2:

     A tractor motor started up; […] the cheeser’s arms carried on grabbing pails of milk and pouring the white flow by the hundredweight into weighing pans and cooling basins […]

2. Someone who adds cheese to a pizza in an assembly line.
   • 1986, Tom Monaghan, Robert Anderson, Pizza Tiger, page 269:

     But Terry Voice was the best pizza cheeser I've ever seen.

   • 2011, Pasquale Gagliardi, Symbols and Artifacts: Views of the Corporate Landscape, page 276:

     Skillfully done, cheesers are able to grab just the right amount of cheese from the tray and distribute it on the sauced surface of the pizza so that it is uniform in thickness and covers the layer of sauce right up to the edge. The best cheesers use a wrist motion, like dealing cards, that makes the cheese seem to flow like liquid and spread evenly over the entire pie.

   • 2012, Pete Hautman, Rash, page 103:

     The tosser is at the far left, then the saucer, then the cheeser, then the shooter.

3. (slang) A broad gleeful grin.
   • 1977, Llyod Pye, That Prosser Kid, link:

     I looked at his normally deadpan face and saw the faintest outline of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, a cheeser grin on anyone else.

   • 2014, D Ramirez, Dreaming by Day (short stories) and Salvation Island (novel excerpt):

     Rene swung around and saw his youngest, Miguel, standing there in his underwear, a big cheeser spreading across his face.

4. (slang) A jovial greeting.
   • 1994, Tom Kakonis, Shadow Counter‎^[1]:

     Got to be a good sign though, so Click rigged out a cheeser of his own and said brightly, "Mornin', Mr. Brewster," underlining it with the molar squeak.

5. (slang) A senior or geezer.
   • 1994, Lisa Kleypas, Dreaming of you‎^[2], page 259:

     But you'll want to marry someone your own age, not some old cheeser.

   • 1999, Philip Hamburger, Friends Talking in the Night, page 159:

     And I suppose it wasn't you mucking about on that damp slab, breathing heavy and saying you would consider it an honor and a privilege to be lying with me under this sod in eternal bliss, surrounded by all these distinguished cheesers.

6. (prison slang) An inmate of a borstal who tries to ingratiate himself with the staff.
   • 1959, Archives of Criminal Psychodynamics, page 453:

     The boys tend not to discuss their individual complaints with the cottage staff because of lack of time or privacy, because the staff must treat all boys the same, and because the boys fear being called “cheesers” if they attempt to cultivate a close relationship with the staff.

   • 1973, A. E. Bottoms, Frederick Hemming McClintock, Criminals Coming of Age, page 163:

     Interestingly , `cheesers' were usually despised by the majority of inmates, and by no means only by the 'daddy' and his surrounding clique of 'hard men'.

   • 1986, John Roger Scott Whiting, Roger Whiting, Crime and Punishment: A Study Across Time, page 188:

     Cheesers were those who sucked up to the staff.

7. (by extension, derogatory) Someone who is immature.
   • 1993, Eugene Robert Shaw, Inside the Bargain, page 124:

     It's 'cause some cheeser had to throw paper.

   • 1994, Stephen King, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, page 506:

     Oh, Brian, you are such a cheeser!

   • 2011, Doug Depew, SAT & BAF!: Memories of a Tower Rat, page 96:

     Any cheesers that get near this will skulk away in shame once they realize we don't tolerate cheesers.

   • 2012, Sheila L. Ramsey, Quest for a Gentleman: Sins of the First Freedom, page 8:

     In our measly little clique, we had one cheeser, who ended up following me all the way to Plantation Grove College.

8. A cocktail sandwich made with cheese.
   • 2011, Katherine Hall Page, The Body in the Gazebo: A Faith Fairchild Mystery‎^[3], page 173:

     Tom had made toasted cheese sandwiches, or toasted “cheesers,” as he called them.

9. (UK, dialect) A conker, especially one with a flat side.
   • 1967, Geoffrey Atheling Wagner, The Sands of Valor, page 78:

     It had been the same in another bedroom, too high for pleasure in those days, with its ornate grate and bedside table of shining walnut, on which the loot of his boyhood days looked guiltily out-of-place—lead soldiers, squashed toffees, lengths of string, cheesers, marbles, odd catapult parts, one cowboy “sixgun".

   • 1994, Hamilton Crane, Miss Seeton Undercover, page 214:

     There were sniggers from the Plummergen spectators as they saw that the conker dangling from the string in his hand was a cheeser, one of the awkward, wedge-shaped nuts produced when two or more horse chestnuts developed inside the same prickly husk.

   • 2010, John Sidney Rickerby, The Other Belfast: An Irish Youth, page 95:

     We would all collect the largest and hardest cheesers we could find.

10. (slang) A particularly strong-smelling fart.
    • 1978, Donald Zochert, Murder in the Hellfire Club, page 135:

      "It's a cheeser!" Potter gasped loudly, his little fish-eyes bulging. "God damn! It is a cheeser!

11. (textiles) A small spool that is used in the finishing stage of yarn-making.
    • 1920, Pacific Ports - Volume 3, page 64:

      After the twisting is completed the finished yarn is wound on small spools, known as cheesers, to be weighed.

    • 1921, The Wool Year Book - Volume 14, page 275:

      By means of a special automatic cheeser, a sufficient number of balls — say, 64 — are built up to fill a creel, from which they are run into the next machine.

    • 1970, The British Textile Industry, page 7:

      Spinners and winders, coners and cheesers

• (someone who makes or sells cheese): affineur, cheesemaker, cheesemonger, fromager
• (broad grin): shit-eating grin; see also Thesaurus:smile
• (senior, geezer): geriatric, oldster, senior citizen; see also Thesaurus:old person

• cheeres