My friend Emily works for Merriam-Webster as a “definer.” Part of her job is to identify and campaign for popular words that aren’t in the dictionary but should be. In the past, she’s successfully lobbied for “spaghetti strap” and “transfer station,” won “badass” a second definition and pleased English-speaking fetishists everywhere by the getting the Collegiate to recognize the slangish usage of a phrase whose other meaning is a synonym for “pudding-pipe tree.”

Last Friday, she called me wondering what to call a “cheeselover”. She’d poked around a little and heard that “caseophile” (Latin caseo for “cheese” + English -phile for “one who loves it”) was a possibility. This was what I would have suggested as I heard it often during my time as a cheesemaker. Plus, there’s the Caseus Prize, which is awarded every year to the best cheese trolley in Italy, and the International Caseus Award, which celebrates cheeses protected by PDO.

But then I got an email from her yesterday in which she reported that she was going with “turophile,” which comes from the irregular from Greek tyros cheese + -phile. The word, which apparently dates back to 1938. I’d never heard it before. Has anyone else?

Correction: Emily is not “going with” the word turophile, as it’s already been “gone with,” as in it’s already in the dictionary. Emily writes: “I’m guessing ‘caseophile’ has started cropping up because people don’t know about ‘turophile.’ it’ll be interesting to see if ‘caseophile’ overtakes the word from the Greek…”

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