Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Containing or resembling cheese.
  • adjective Of poor quality; shoddy.
  • adjective Vulgarly pretentious or sentimental.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having the consistence, taste, odor, etc., of cheese; resembling cheese in any respect; caseous. Cheesy degeneration or transformation, caseous degeneration (which see, under caseous).
  • Stylish; fine; showy; ‘quite the cheese.’

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having the nature, qualities, taste, form, consistency, or appearance of cheese.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective of or relating to cheese
  • adjective resembling, or containing cheese
  • adjective informal of poor quality through being overdramatic, excessively emotional or clichéd, trite, contrived, shoddy

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of very poor quality; flimsy

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Sense 2b, possibly partly from earlier cheesy, showy, from cheese.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

cheese +‎ -y

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Examples

Comments

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  • cheesy music is like desgusting music. Chessy is somenthig without taste, bad made.

    November 16, 2010

  • I always associated this with things that were vaguely schmaltzy or milquetoast, but I keep hearing that the meaning for folks from my parents' and grandparents' generation is more like shoddy. What gives? Is there a better word to use when conversing with my elders?

    September 9, 2014

  • (I'll note that Wiktionary claims it's "of poor quality through being overdramatic," etc., but I think cheesy things can sometimes be well done or of decent quality, just... unfashionable or silly.)

    September 9, 2014

  • Maybe I'm mixing up cheesy with corny.

    September 11, 2014

  • Alert! We have a Doritos mole in our midst.

    September 11, 2014