Dictionary

sub-cheese en · NOUN

Etymology

Borrowed from Hindi सब (sab, “all, every”) + Hindi चीज़ (cīz, “thing, object, item”), respelled in a folk-etymological identification with sub- + cheese.

Meanings

1. (archaic, slang) Everything; all there is.
   • Another inch further over would have precipitated the whole sub cheeze, down the incline. 1859, P. & O., Always Ready, or, Every One His Pride, London: Hall, Virtue, & Co., page 175:
   • 'She's as clever as a man, confound her,' Martyn went on. 'She broke up the bungalow over my head while I was talking at her. Settled the whole subchiz [outfit] in three hours—servants, horses, and all. I didn't get my orders till nine.' 1898, Rudyard Kipling, “William the Conqueror: Part I”, in The Day's Work, London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, page 181:
   • "The whole bloody sub-cheese, the lot!" 1993, George MacDonald Fraser, Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War in Burma, London: HarperCollinsPublishers, published 1995, →ISBN, page 187:
   • 'If you'd threatened that earlier, Monty, I'd have ponied up the whole sub-cheese to avoid it.' 2018, Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs, London: Hutchinson, →ISBN, page 17:

Forms