Cheese and rice (Jesus Christ!)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 6/13/06, Bapopik at aol.com <Bapopik at aol.com> wrote:
>
> I celebrated my three-month anniversary with the movie THE BREAK-UP.  Chicago
> tour guide Vince Vaughn thankfully didn't mention "the Windy City," but  he
> did get "Second City" wrong.
> ...
> One character declares "Cheese and rice!" HDAS has only "cheese and  crusts."

In addition to "cheese and crust", HDAS also has cites for "cheese on
crackers" from 1942 (in the American Thesaurus of Slang) and "cheese
and crackers" from 1962. Plain old "cheese" is cited from 1911.

>From Newspaperarchive, earlier cites for "(holy) cheese" and "(holy)
cheese and crackers":

1902 _Fort Wayne (Ind.) Evening Sentinel_ 22 Aug. 6/4 Holy cheese, do
youse fellers give a man a drill like this fer a plain vag?
[about a hobo being sentenced for a vagrancy charge, or "vag"]

1953 _Traverse City (Mich.) Record-Eagle_ 4/2 Feb. Holy cheese and
crackers! You sure?

(There are also notices in the Washington Post from 1936 for a
vaudeville comedian named Billy "Cheese and Crackers" Hagen.)


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org