government cheese
government cheese noun: a poor quality processed cheese, similar to regular American cheese, produced and stored in the 1970s and 1980s from excess dairy milk production from dairy subsidies, created by the U.S. government to support the milk industry, and for long term storage.
Noun
government cheese (uncountable)
- A poor quality processed cheese, similar to regular American cheese, produced and stored in the 1970s and 1980s from excess dairy milk production from dairy subsidies, created by the U.S. government to support the milk industry, and for long term storage.
- Processed cheese provided to welfare and food stamp recipients in the United States during the 1980s and early 1990s (coming from such stocks).
- Any inexpensive unexceptional cheese.
- Eww, no. Don't be putting that government cheese on my sandwich! Give me the havarti!
- Synonyms:
- rat-trap cheese, rat cheese
- Welfare in general.
- Near-synonym: largesse
- Synonyms:
- largesse
Synonyms of government cheese
Questions about government cheese
- What does government cheese mean?
- Government cheese means a poor quality processed cheese, similar to regular American cheese, produced and stored in the 1970s and 1980s from excess dairy milk production from dairy subsidies, created by the U.S. government to support the milk industry, and for long term storage.
- What part of speech is government cheese?
- Government cheese is a noun.
Words near government cheese in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: government 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.
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Cite this entry: “government cheese.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/government_cheese. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.