The Definition of a Turophile

What do you call a person who loves cheese? A curd nerd? A cheesehead? The Big Cheese? While all of those may be correct, the more formal term is actually turophile. If you look this word up in the Merriam-Webster dictionary the definition literally reads: a connoisseur of cheese and/or a cheese fancier. The origin for the word turophile can be traced back through Greek and English language; tyros being the Greek word for cheese and -phile being an ending from English that means lover. 

This term for cheese lovers is relatively new and traces back to the 1930s. It was not popularized until the 1950s when writer, editor, and radio host Clifton Fadiman introduced turophile to readers in his eloquent musings on the subject of cheese.