Slang etymology from South Park ('to cheese')

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Thu Mar 27 15:57:21 UTC 2008


On Mar 27, 2008, at 8:39 AM, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

> A google search for "inhaling cat urine" turned up only 7 hits, one a
> reference to the South Park episode. The other six discussed the
> health hazards of
> cleaning the litter box. Surely this is just a satirical nonce form,
> Wilson? The
> gloss for "to cheese" is 'to become intoxicated by sniffing
> concentrated
> urine of male housecats'--not something that seems very likely to
> work (or cartch
> on).
>
> Interesting literary usage/creation, however!
>
> I did find, in a different Google search, the use of the noun cheese
> to refer
> to a type of heroin. See:
>
> http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=183618&Disp=41.

i believe that this was the sense in the quote wilson heard.

from the wikipedia site:

Cheese is a heroin-based recreational drug that surfaced in the United
States in 2005 and came to the attention of the media inside and
outside[1] the United States after a string of deaths among
adolescents in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, in 2006 and 2007.

Cheese is formed by combining heroin with crushed tablets of certain
over-the-counter cold medication, such as Tylenol PM. Such cold
medications contain acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol,
and the antihistaminediphenhydramine, the active ingredient in
Benadryl and a common opiate potentiator.[2] Cheese samples obtained
innorth Dallas contained between 2% and 8% heroin, in contrast to the
30% commonly found in black tar heroin.[3][4]Users commonly take the
powder by insufflation rather than by intravenous injection. Another
less common term for this mixture is "Tylenol With Smack" by analogy
to the Tylenol With Codeine series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese_(recreational_drug)

(i heard it mentioned on NPR a day or two ago.)

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list