big cheese
big cheese noun: a very important figure, especially a high-ranking person in an organization.
Noun
big cheese (plural big cheeses)
- A very important figure, especially a high-ranking person in an organization.
- He’ll be meeting with the big cheese first thing tomorrow, to present his proposal.
- I know. But it's his ship now, his command; he's in charge, he's the boss, the head man, the top dog, the big cheese, the head honcho, number one...1980, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, Airplane!, spoken by Rex Kramer (Robert Stack)
- Synonyms:
- baron, big enchilada, big gun, big kahuna, big man, big name, big noise, big shot, bigwig, big wheel
big cheese meaning in Tamil and Tagalog
big cheese in Tamil
- முக்கியத் தலைவர்
big cheese in Tagalog
- very important figure
- malaking tao
Synonyms of big cheese
29 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- boss
- grand poobah
- head honcho
- heavy hitter
- heavyweight
- high muckamuck
- high muckety-muck
- king of all one surveys
- king of the castle
- king of the hill
- kingpin
- macher
- mayor
- muckamuck
- muckety muck
- mugwump
- numero uno
- panjandrum
- poobah
- rooster
- somebody
- top banana
- top boy
- top cat
- top dog
- top gun
- very important person
- VIP
- wheel
Forms of big cheese
| plural | big cheeses |
|---|
Origin of big cheese
From big + cheese (“wealth, fame, importance”). Earliest use to mean importance from 1910.
Words formed from big cheese
Questions about big cheese
- What does big cheese mean?
- Big cheese means a very important figure, especially a high-ranking person in an organization.
- What is big cheese in Tamil?
- Big cheese in Tamil is முக்கியத் தலைவர். See Big cheese meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is big cheese?
- Big cheese is a noun.
- What is the plural of big cheese?
- The plural of big cheese is big cheeses.
Words near big cheese in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: big cheese (page history and authors); big cheese (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-big cheese.ogg.
Cite this entry: “big cheese.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/big_cheese. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.