Word.ws English Dictionary

chalk and cheese

chalk and cheese noun: said of things that are very different, though possibly superficially alike.

chalk and cheese: said of things that are very different, though possibly superficially alike
Image: Jon Sullivan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

chalk and cheese (uncountable)

  1. (New Zealand, UK, idiomatic) Said of things that are very different, though possibly superficially alike.

Synonyms of chalk and cheese

Origin of chalk and cheese

Attested in variant form since 1393. The surface of some cheeses, particularly unaged ones, resembles the surface of chalk: white, crumbling, but in substance cheese is much softer than chalk. It is interesting to note that lime chalk and cottage cheese forms a glue-like material used in the restoration of ancient half-timbered houses, perhaps suggesting an alternative original meaning.

Questions about chalk and cheese

What does chalk and cheese mean?
Chalk and cheese means said of things that are very different, though possibly superficially alike.
What part of speech is chalk and cheese?
Chalk and cheese is a noun.

Words near chalk and cheese in the dictionary

  1. chalinid
  2. chalinids
  3. chalitzah
  4. chalk
  5. chalk against
  6. chalk and cheese
  7. chalk and talk
  8. chalk bag
  9. chalk bags
  10. chalk bass
  11. chalk box

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chalk and cheese (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-chalk and cheese.ogg.

Cite this entry: “chalk and cheese.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chalk_and_cheese. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.