"cheese eater" meaning in English

See cheese eater in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: cheese eaters [plural]
Etymology: From the idea that rats eat cheese. Head templates: {{en-noun}} cheese eater (plural cheese eaters)
  1. A rat; an informer who betrays colleagues.
    Sense id: en-cheese_eater-en-noun-lRlVcmLn Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 47 53
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cheese, eater. One who eats cheese. Synonyms: cheese-eater
    Sense id: en-cheese_eater-en-noun-WFLpo9uW Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 47 53

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for cheese eater meaning in English (2.3kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the idea that rats eat cheese.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "cheese eaters",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "cheese eater (plural cheese eaters)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "47 53",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1998, Sam B. Girgus, Samuel Bruce Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan, page 155",
          "text": "As a \"stool pigeon,\" or what the corrupt union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) calls a \"cheese eater,\" Terry now feels totally dejected and alone, even though the murder by the mob of his brother, Charley \"the Gent\" (Rod Steiger) helped motivate him to testify.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2003, Robert Scott, Dangerous Attraction",
          "text": "I'm not sure if I wrote you about all the madness or not, but Mumrock's [Justin Merriman] paperwork is starting to come in and he was making it very clear to me to tell you about cheese eaters in a cell near you.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Carl B. Klockars, Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, M.R. Haberfeld, Enhancing Police Integrity, page 71",
          "text": "The issue involved a group member who was widely regarded in the Department as a \"cheese eater\" - the Charleston term for a police officer who advances his career by reporting the misconduct of others.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A rat; an informer who betrays colleagues."
      ],
      "id": "en-cheese_eater-en-noun-lRlVcmLn",
      "links": [
        [
          "rat",
          "rat"
        ],
        [
          "informer",
          "informer"
        ],
        [
          "betray",
          "betray"
        ],
        [
          "colleague",
          "colleague"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "47 53",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cheese, eater. One who eats cheese."
      ],
      "id": "en-cheese_eater-en-noun-WFLpo9uW",
      "links": [
        [
          "cheese",
          "cheese#English"
        ],
        [
          "eater",
          "eater#English"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "10 90",
          "word": "cheese-eater"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "cheese eater"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns"
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From the idea that rats eat cheese.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "cheese eaters",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "cheese eater (plural cheese eaters)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1998, Sam B. Girgus, Samuel Bruce Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan, page 155",
          "text": "As a \"stool pigeon,\" or what the corrupt union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) calls a \"cheese eater,\" Terry now feels totally dejected and alone, even though the murder by the mob of his brother, Charley \"the Gent\" (Rod Steiger) helped motivate him to testify.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2003, Robert Scott, Dangerous Attraction",
          "text": "I'm not sure if I wrote you about all the madness or not, but Mumrock's [Justin Merriman] paperwork is starting to come in and he was making it very clear to me to tell you about cheese eaters in a cell near you.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Carl B. Klockars, Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, M.R. Haberfeld, Enhancing Police Integrity, page 71",
          "text": "The issue involved a group member who was widely regarded in the Department as a \"cheese eater\" - the Charleston term for a police officer who advances his career by reporting the misconduct of others.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A rat; an informer who betrays colleagues."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "rat",
          "rat"
        ],
        [
          "informer",
          "informer"
        ],
        [
          "betray",
          "betray"
        ],
        [
          "colleague",
          "colleague"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cheese, eater. One who eats cheese."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "cheese",
          "cheese#English"
        ],
        [
          "eater",
          "eater#English"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "cheese-eater"
    }
  ],
  "word": "cheese eater"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.