cheese dream

qms commented on the word cheese dream

n. An especially vivid and/or bizarre dream.

n. An open-faced sandwich of grilled or broiled cheese on bread.

I came across this term in a Guardian interview with Lorraine Bracco:

The famous fill Bracco’s conversation. Somehow, though, it feels less like namedropping than her just being one of those people for whom life ended up like an ongoing cheese dream, random faces drifting by. Madonna turns up here, Christopher Walken there.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/20/lorraine-bracco-goodfellas-the-sopranos-martin-scorsese

It seems to be a British expression and may be founded in a study of British cheeses published by the British Cheese Board in 2005 claiming to have determined that eating cheese just before going to bed can affect your dreams. It further claimed that the type of cheese you ate controlled what sort of dream you had: Stilton for bizarre effects, cheddar for dreams of celebrities, etc.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4851485

I have seen it used as two words and as a hyphenated word. The definition I provide above is my best guess at the application of this term. Can anyone add more to this?

(For the sake of completeness I include the sandwich definition but I am in no way curious about that. It has a Wikipedia entry.)

February 21, 2017

TankHughes commented on the word cheese dream

I would guess it's an allusion to Dicken's A Christmas Carol when Scrooge tries to explain Marley away:

"“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”"

February 22, 2017

bilby commented on the word cheese dream

Vegan cheese for dreams of cute rescue wombats, etc.

February 22, 2017

hugovk commented on the word cheese dream

It's a common belief in Britain that (certain types of) cheese before bed can give you weird dreams or nightmares.

In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge blamed cheese for causing his ghostly night-time encounters. He only ate “a crumb”, and the story may have had a happy ending, but the idea that cheese gives you nightmares still persists. Is there any truth to this?

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120417-does-cheese-give-you-nightmares

February 22, 2017