sub-cheese

English

Alternative forms

• subcheese, subcheeze, subchiz

Etymology

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

Pronoun

sub-cheese

1. (originally Anglo-Indian, military slang, archaic) Everything; all there is.
   • 1859, P. & O., Always Ready, or, Every One His Pride, London: Hall, Virtue, & Co., page 175:

     Another inch further over would have precipitated the whole sub cheeze, down the incline.

   • 1898, Rudyard Kipling, “William the Conqueror: Part I”, in The Day's Work, London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, page 181:

     '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.'

   • 1993, George MacDonald Fraser, Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War in Burma, London: HarperCollinsPublishers, published 1995, →ISBN, page 187:

     "The whole bloody sub-cheese, the lot!"

   • 2018, Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs, London: Hutchinson, →ISBN, page 17:

     'If you'd threatened that earlier, Monty, I'd have ponied up the whole sub-cheese to avoid it.'

Usage notes

• Chiefly used in the phrase "the whole sub-cheese".

Further reading

• Jonathon Green (2024) “sub-cheese n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang