Cheesewiches

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jim Marks from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Hi, Jim. How are you doing?

Hey, Jim.

Well, I come from a long line of Hoosiers.

And my grandparents, when they would fix lunch sometimes,

They would put a couple pieces of bread with cheese between them,

And they would grill it.

And what they called that sandwich was a toasted cheese witch.

I have never heard anybody else say that,

And I wonder if that’s something specific to Indiana

Or just specific to my grandparents.

Well, Jim, let me ask you, where in Indiana?

Well, near Fort Wayne is where the Markleys are from, so it would be in that area.

Oh, that’s so interesting because I have a dear friend from Fort Wayne who always called them cheese toasties.

And the first time I ever heard cheese toastie, I’m afraid I laughed at her.

Did you ever hear cheese toasties in that area?

No, no, I didn’t.

And I have other relatives there, and I never heard any of them say anything but, you know, grilled cheese sandwich.

-huh.

So I don’t know.

Toasted cheese, which.

Yeah, I’ve seen that before.

It’s not all that common.

I’ve seen it in places like Pennsylvania and the Midwest a little bit, but it’s not nearly as common as grilled cheese.

I mean, maybe you should tell us exactly what that sandwich is like.

Yeah, I wonder if it’s the canonical grilled cheese sandwich that I’m thinking of.

It’s pretty much what I think everyone thinks of.

They put butter on bread and put cheese in between the slices and put it on a frying pan and cook it up.

Yep, that’s what I would call a grilled cheese.

There have been Cheez Witch brand names dating back as far as the 1920s for a variety of cheesy products.

That’s true.

I suspect this is just a one-off for your family.

Maybe they did borrow it from one of these brand names.

There’s one that is in the trademark database from 1950.

It’s something along the lines of, they describe it as a cheese-filled waffle wafer sandwich.

Yeah, who knows?

And then you’ll find it again, just repeatedly coming up.

A lot of times it’s a challenge to the trademark because a lot of people keep re-corning Cheez Witch for a variety of different products

And then kind of getting in trouble because the name’s already been trademarked.

Yeah, but just not that common.

No.

The other thing to throw in here is that that witch suffix is super interesting

Because that has been tossed around for around 100 years.

We’ve been making new words out of that witch suffix,

Always attaching it to a root and suggesting that root and witch together form a kind of sandwich.

So that’s why cheese witch keeps getting recoined again and again and again.

And so I would also suggest that perhaps your grandparents simply coined the new word on their own

Because they knew about the witch suffix and were comfortable just, you know, creating new stuff, new fun stuff to say.

Well, they were capable of a lot of things, so I wouldn’t be surprised.

Yeah.

Jim, thanks so much for your call.

We really appreciate it.

Well, thanks for the information, and enjoy the show, and you guys are doing a great job.

Oh, that’s our pleasure.

Thanks a lot, Jim.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye now.

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