The Big Chiz

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

Hi, who’s this?

Hi.

This is Sue. I’m calling from Wilder, Vermont.

What’s on your mind, Sue?

Well, my question has to do with an expression I think many people are familiar with.

And the most memorable instance for me of hearing the phrase was when my family and my husband’s family were having a barbecue at my parents’ house the night before our wedding in 1977.

And my husband’s 92-year-old Italian grandfather was there, and he had found a comfortable place to sit in the den, and he seemed to be taking everything in.

He was pretty quiet until he spotted my dad.

They hadn’t been formally introduced yet.

My dad was passing through the room, and my husband’s grandfather, Carlo, he exclaimed, “So, you the big of cheese, eh?”

That was so amusing to my family.

We never thought of my dad that way.

And my dad is now almost 90.

God bless him.

And we still refer to him as the big cheese on occasion.

From that moment.

Not the big cheese.

Right.

From that moment, he was the big cheese.

Nice.

So it’s one of those expressions I’ve taken for granted,

And I’d love to know something about its origin.

Yeah.

It doesn’t really have to do with cheese.

Oh, I wish it did.

Yeah, we’re not 100% sure, but we have a pretty strong guess about this term.

Okay.

And there are a couple of different stories that combine here.

As early as the early 18th century, if you really liked something in England,

You might say that it was the thing or it’s the real thing.

And as it happens, in Urdu and Persian, the word for thing is cheese.

That’s spelled C-H-I-Z.

And it may be that in the mid-19th century, British soldiers came back from India with this term cheese, meaning thing, and just sort of jokingly substituted it.

And so they would say, it’s the cheese, or it’s the real cheese, rather than it’s the real thing.

Meanwhile, in this country, for years, people were using a lot of different terms for the top guy, the top dog.

They were using terms like, you know, big shot, big fish, big dog, even big bug and big potato.

Big wheel, big noise.

Yeah, big wheel.

I hadn’t thought about that one.

Yeah, big noise.

And somewhere along the way, those got combined into the big cheese.

And so now you can be the big cheese.

I imagine a great wheel of cheese with eyes and arms and legs.

Well, Vermont is known for its cheese, among other things.

This would have been mozzarella, though, right?

Well, I never would have figured that one out.

Thank you so much for having me on the show to ask that question

And for having such an entertaining, informative program.

We really enjoy it very much.

Well, it’s our pleasure. Thank you so much.

It’s the big cheese.

And please give our regards to the big cheese, okay?

Okay, I sure will.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I also always imagine Mayor McCheese,

Only instead of a hamburger for the head, it’s a giant cheese wheel.

He’s standing up there pontificating, and all I want is a bite.

A wheel of cheese.

I do like cheese.

Do you?

Do you know what kind of cheese is made backwards?

No.

Edam cheese.

E-D-A-M.

Nice.

Oh, I got a million of them.

Call us, and we’ll tell you some more.

877-929-9673, or send your questions about language to words@waywordradio.org.