sub-cheese

noun

sub-cheese

noun

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

1

Government, Military, Politics, War 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:
2 more examples
  • "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:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.