cheesehead

English

Alternative forms

• cheese-head

Etymology

From cheese +‎ head, in reference to the cheese production of these regions.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃiːzˌhɛd/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

cheesehead (plural cheeseheads)

1. (slang, US) A person from the state of Wisconsin.
2. (slang) A fan of the Green Bay Packers (an American football team of Wisconsin), some of whom wear foam hats shaped like wedges of cheese.
3. (slang, derogatory, ethnic slur) A German, Dutch, or Scandinavian person.
4. (slang, derogatory) A blockhead, a stupid person.
5. (slang, used in the European Union) A white person from the Netherlands or having Dutch heritage.
   • 1887, Michael Theophile Hubert Perelaer, Ran Away from the Dutch: Or, Borneo from South to North, page 61:

     "Return to those cheesheads? Sacre/ nom de tonnerre! never!" the Walloon cried energetically.

   • 1894, The Humour of Holland, page 163:

     But, alas! fate was against him, he could not gratify his desire for vengeance; but being forced to relieve his feelings in some way, he did so by indignantly shouting after their retreating figures, “ You Dutch cheeseheads, you!”

   • 1972, Abu Hanifah, Tales of a Revolution, page 30:

     In time we were involved in fights with this other school and I remember that there was always confusion when the cheeseheads were attacked, and at first the opponents forgot that the Regent's son and I didn't belong to them. Young Soekarno apparently couldn't keep away from the lovely white Dutch girls.

   • 2002, J.E. Fender, The Private Revolution of Geoffrey Frost, page 14:

     In the eight years of close and intimate contact since Geoffrey Frost had taken him off the beach at that pestilential Javanese Port of Batavia, where he had languished after the cheeseheads of the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie had stranded him there, Stuan Ferguson had learned to anticipate his captain.

   • 2002, Suzanne M. Sinke, Dutch Immigrant Women in the United States, 1880-1920, page 110:

     Moerkerk de Vries, as a second-generation woman, had greater aspirations than some, but she worked at jobs which were typical for Dutch immigrant women in that region, and she was a "Cheesehead" or one of the "damned foreigners" as far as many were concerned.

6. (slang) Someone who eats a lot of cheese.
   • July 1993, Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin, "Say Cheese!" in Vegetarian Times, No. 191, p. 85:

     Having spent several days eating rich cheese dishes while observing that the Swiss are, in general, a slim and fit population — so unlike the cheeseheads I've known at home — I had to ask: "Just how much cheese do you eat?"

   • 2006, Patricia Cobe, Restaurant Business, volume 105, page 60:

     AMERICA IS TURNING INTO A NATION OF CHEESEHEADS. PER CAPITA CONSUMPTION nearly tripled in the last 30 years, from 11 pounds to 31 pounds, with roughly 60 percent of that gain coming through foodservice, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

   • 2008, ed. Malcolm Abrams, Bloom, volume 3, number 1, page 26:

     Good News for Cheeseheads! Those of us in Bloomington who are fiends for good cheese have long faced a choice […]

Anagrams

• head cheese, headcheese