Word.ws English Dictionary

cheese eater

cheese eater noun: a rat; an informer who betrays colleagues.

Noun

cheese eater (plural cheese eaters)

  1. A rat; an informer who betrays colleagues.
    • 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.1998, Sam B. Girgus, Samuel Bruce Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan, page 155
    • 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.2003, Robert Scott, Dangerous Attraction
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cheese, eater. One who eats cheese.

Forms of cheese eater

pluralcheese eaters
alternative formcheese-eater

Origin of cheese eater

From the idea that rats eat cheese.

Questions about cheese eater

What does cheese eater mean?
Cheese eater means a rat; an informer who betrays colleagues.
What part of speech is cheese eater?
Cheese eater is a noun.
What is the plural of cheese eater?
The plural of cheese eater is cheese eaters.

Words near cheese eater in the dictionary

  1. cheese doodle
  2. cheese doodles
  3. cheese down
  4. cheese dream
  5. cheese dreams
  6. cheese eater
  7. cheese eaters
  8. cheese eating
  9. cheese flies
  10. cheese fly
  11. cheese food

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cheese eater (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.

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