moon substance, green

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/9/2011 04:04 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

>On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 6:10 PM, Jonathan Lighter
><wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Green cheese" is the only version I'm familiar with.
>
>Me, too.
>
>FWIW, it was dekkids before I cottoned to to the fact that _green_ WRT
>cheese was being used in opposition to _ripe_, WRT to cheese -
>concepts with which I was long totally unfamiliar - and it was not the
>stomach-turning, nonsensical assumption that there was some form of
>cheese, a sickening green in color, out of which the clearly-white
>moon was made.

Not always so, Wilson, as I learned when reading Samuel Sewall's
Diary -- he ate green cheese on an excursion to Dorchester.  And the
OED thinks it knows which green cheese the moon is made of.

"green cheese, n."

"a. New or fresh cheese ..."

"b. An inferior kind of cheese prepared from skim milk or
whey."  [Sewall certainly would not eat such cheese -- he liked
Cheshire, and brought some back from England for himself and as
gifts; and the OED  has nary a quotation.]

"c. Cheese coloured green (usually only in parts, with a pattern)
with sage; also called sage cheese.The saying to believe that the
moon is made of green cheese (for which see cheese n.1 2a) might
belong to any of these senses; perh. sense c is the most likely, the
reference being to the variegated surface of the moon."  [This is
Sewall's cheese, found c1390 &ff, but he called it "sage cheese", not
"green cheese".]

Joel

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