the.com/big cheese
The person in charge — named for an era when wealth smelled like dairy, not data.
means The most important person in a group or organization — the boss, the one who calls the shots.
from From early 1900s American slang, where 'cheese' meant something excellent or important — likely riffing on the Persian/Urdu word 'chiz,' meaning 'thing,' which British colonials in India picked up and brought home as slang for 'the real thing' or 'the genuine article.' 'Big cheese' simply supersized that sense of importance into a person — the main thing became the main man.
- origin
- possibly from Urdu/Persian chiz, meaning thing, not actual cheese
- migration
- entered English slang via British India in the 1800s
- cousin phrase
- big wig, from actual oversized wigs denoting status
- irony
- cheese was once peasant food before idiom gentrified it