rat cheese
- noun
- Slang
:
queso cheddar
- He put a thick slice of rat cheese on his sandwich for extra flavor.
Examples
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The store was out of rat cheese, so I bought sharp cheddar instead.
-
My grandmother always kept a block of rat cheese in the fridge.
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I love rat cheese on my sandwiches.
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Can you pass the rat cheese?
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He put a thick slice of rat cheese on his sandwich for extra flavor.
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My grandmother always kept a block of rat cheese in the fridge.
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The store was out of rat cheese, so I bought sharp cheddar instead.
Synonyms
50
1.0
A hard, smooth cheese with a strong, sharp taste
12
1.0
A hard, smooth cheese with a strong taste commonly used in cooking and sandwiches
A common American cheddar people buy in wrapped slices or blocks in shops
How Informal
Surface Forms
Morphology
rat + cheese
The noun-noun compound is directly interpretable from its parts: a B1 learner who knows 'rat' (a filthy/undesirable rodent) and 'cheese' will readily infer a meaning like food that looks or smells so bad it might be associated with rats. Although informal and jocular, the metaphorical derogation is compositionally predictable, so learners can grasp the gist without prior exposure.
Etymology
Rat cheese may come from old farms where people kept big blocks of plain yellow cheese in barns and rats sometimes nibbled the edges, making that cheese seem common and cheap. So people began to call ordinary American cheddar 'rat cheese'.