Word.ws English Dictionary

Swiss cheese

Swiss cheese noun: synonym of Emmentaler, a Swiss cheese with many holes.

swiss cheese: synonym of Emmentaler, a Swiss cheese with many holes
Image: Christian Bauer, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

Swiss cheese (uncountable)

  1. (informal) Synonym of Emmentaler, a Swiss cheese with many holes
    Synonyms:
    Emmentaler
  2. (colloquial) By extension, any cheese which resembles Emmentaler, especially ones with holes.
  3. (colloquial, figuratively) Something that is full of holes or vulnerabilities.
    • "If people really knew the extent to which the Internet is Swiss cheese, they would freak out," Fancher says. As with employee crime, the best protections against attacks by outsiders are matters of common sense, say security experts.1999, Mark Fisch, Criminology, 1999-2000, page 103
    • […] surprise and frustration when systems ultimately decay into a block of security Swiss cheese.2004, InfoWorld, volume 26, number 13, page 26

Verb

Swiss cheese (third-person singular simple present Swiss cheeses, present participle Swiss cheesing, simple past and past participle Swiss cheesed)

  1. (slang, transitive, African-American Vernacular, usually passive voice) To murder (someone) by shooting them full of holes; to shoot (someone) many times.
    • He will get Swiss cheesed.

Swiss cheese meaning in Hindi, Tamil and Arabic

Swiss cheese in Hindi

cheese with holes
स्विस पनीर svis panīr

Swiss cheese in Tamil

பாலாடைக்கட்டி, பாற்கட்டி

Swiss cheese in Arabic

cheese with holes
جبنة سويسرية

Synonyms of Swiss cheese

Forms of Swiss cheese

third-person singular presentSwiss cheeses
present participleSwiss cheesing
past participleSwiss cheesed
pastSwiss cheesed

Words formed from Swiss cheese

Questions about Swiss cheese

What does Swiss cheese mean?
Swiss cheese means synonym of Emmentaler, a Swiss cheese with many holes.
What is Swiss cheese in Hindi?
Swiss cheese in Hindi is स्विस पनीर (svis panīr). See Swiss cheese meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is Swiss cheese?
Swiss cheese can be a noun or a verb.

Words near Swiss cheese in the dictionary

  1. Swiss banks
  2. Swiss bar
  3. Swiss bars
  4. Swiss chard
  5. Swiss chards
  6. Swiss cheese
  7. Swiss cheese plant
  8. Swiss cheese plants
  9. Swiss Confederacy
  10. Swiss Confederation
  11. Swiss Cottage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Swiss cheese (page history and authors); swiss 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Swiss cheese.wav.

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