rat cheese
- noun
- Slang
:
comida en mal estado
- This leftover pizza looks like rat cheese!
Examples
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The leftovers had a strange odor, so we jokingly nicknamed them rat cheese.
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I can't believe you still have that rat cheese in the fridge.
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Grandpa opened the fridge and pulled out what he called rat cheese for a midnight snack.
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They served some questionable snacks, referring to them as rat cheese to break the ice.
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We all laughed when she opened the container and declared it was filled with rat cheese.
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After a week in the fridge, the food had transformed into what we now call rat cheese.
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He grimaced at the sight of the moldy sandwich and jokingly said it looked like rat cheese.
Synonyms
A type of cheese with a very strong bad smell
A cheese with a very strong, unpleasant smell like a skunk
Antonyms
How Unappetizing
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 paints a picture of a rat eating bad cheese, so people use the name as a joke for food that looks or smells awful. That's why it is used jokingly to mean 'unappealing' or old food.