🧀

Cheese Wedge Emoji

Food & DrinkU+1F9C0:cheese:

cheesewedge

About Cheese Wedge 🧀

Cheese Wedge () is part of the Food & Drink group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E1.0. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. Click copy above to grab it, paste it anywhere.

Works in iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, and every app that supports Unicode.

Meaning varies across cultures, see cultural notes below.

Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.

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How it looks

What does it mean?

The cheese wedge emoji shows a chunky yellow-orange slice with holes, clearly styled after Swiss cheese even though it's officially a generic "cheese wedge." Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft all went with the same hole-punched look, which is how Swiss ended up winning the visual lottery for every cheese on Earth.

In everyday texting, 🧀 covers a lot more than dairy. Dictionary.com notes it gets used for cheese itself, mice and rats, money, "cheesy" humor, Wisconsin, and the Green Bay Packers. On TikTok it's the unofficial mascot of Cooper's Hill cheese rolling, mac-and-cheese thirst traps, and charcuterie content. On Instagram it tags wine-and-cheese nights and cheese pull slow-mos.

The emoji was approved in Unicode 8.0 (2015) as CHEESE WEDGE, part of proposal L2/14-174. It arrived with the same batch as 🦃 (turkey), 🌯 (burrito), and 🌭 (hot dog), a batch widely considered a turning point for savory food emojis.

🧀 lives a double life on social media: food content and money bragging.

On food TikTok and Instagram, it runs with charcuterie boards, cheese pulls, mac and cheese, grilled cheese, and anything involving a raclette scraper. Cheese pull videos are their own microgenre, usually captioned something like "the stretch 🧀😩". Wine-and-cheese Saturday posts lean on it too: wine glass plus cheese wedge is the quickest possible shorthand for "we are being adults tonight."

On hip-hop Twitter and money-mindset TikTok, 🧀 means cash. "Securing the cheese 🧀," "making cheese 🧀," and "get that cheese 🧀" all lean on the old slang "cheddar" for money, which entered wide circulation after The Notorious B.I.G. rapped "Touch my cheddar, feel my Beretta" on 1994's "Warning." The OED has since formally logged "cheddar" as a money sense.

The third lane is sarcasm. Sending 🧀 after a corny joke, a pickup line, or a dramatic grand gesture marks it as cheesy. It's the closest thing to a verbal eye roll that still feels affectionate.

Food posts and cheese pullsWine and cheese nightsMoney slang (cheddar, making cheese)"Cheesy" and corny humorWisconsin and Packers cultureMice, rats, and cartoons"Say cheese" photosCooper's Hill cheese rolling

What does 🧀 mean in texting?

Three main things: actual cheese (charcuterie, wine nights, pizza), money slang (stacking cheese, cheddar), or marking something as cheesy or corny. Context picks the lane. Wine glass plus cheese = food night. Dollar sign plus cheese = money bragging. Used alone after a sappy joke = calling it cheesy.

The Dairy Emoji Trio

Three emojis cover the dairy shelf. Milk is the raw material, butter is what you get after churning, cheese is what you get after adding bacteria and time. Each arrived in a different Unicode era, and each has its own pop-culture moment attached. Below is how their search interest has tracked since 2020, with butter's BTS spike in 2021 clearly visible.

🥛Milk

Glass of milk. Dairy's raw material. Also Gen Z 'milk behavior' slang for plain or safe. Unicode 9.0 (2016).

🧈Butter

Butter stick. Welded to BTS's 2021 smash single and the 2022 butter board trend. Unicode 12.0 (2019).

🧀Cheese

Swiss-style wedge. Covers charcuterie, money slang, and Wisconsin. Unicode 8.0 (2015).

Butter's sharp Q2 2021 spike lines up exactly with the release of BTS's single. Cheese runs on a slower cycle with a clear upward trajectory into 2026, while milk has jumped sharply in late 2025 as plant-based milk searches accelerate.

What it means from...

💕From a crush

From a crush, 🧀 after a compliment or pickup line is admitting it was cheesy on purpose. It's a wink: "I know that was corny, I meant it anyway." This is almost always flirty and low-risk. If they sent it next to a photo of actual cheese, slow down: they're asking about dinner plans, not confessing feelings.

❤️From a partner

Between partners, 🧀 is usually food logistics ("picking up cheese 🧀") or the inside joke of calling each other's sweet gestures cheesy. It can also show up in money talk about joint goals: "we're stacking cheese 🧀 for the trip." If your partner sends a single cheese wedge with no context, it's either a grocery nudge or they want pasta night.

😂From a friend

Friends use 🧀 for corny takes, cheese pull videos, and anything involving charcuterie plans. "Wine and cheese Friday 🍷🧀" is close to a compulsory text in your late twenties. It also covers roasting: replying 🧀 to a sentimental post means "this is so cheesy," said affectionately.

🏠From family

From parents, 🧀 is usually a literal grocery list ("grab cheese 🧀") or a reaction to a cheesy joke. From siblings, it can be mock roasting, a cheeseball reference, or a Packers thing if you're from the Midwest. From grandparents, treat it as pure dairy.

💼From a coworker

In work chats, 🧀 is safe. It shows up around team lunches, cheese-themed office parties, or laughing about a corny company slogan. The money slang reading is rare in professional contexts unless your workplace leans into finance-bro humor.

👤From a stranger

From a stranger in comments, 🧀 usually reacts to cheese or cooking content. On sports accounts, it's Packers loyalty. On money-oriented pages, it signals agreement with the "secure the bag, get the cheese" vibe. Context decides everything.

What does 🧀 mean from a guy or girl I'm dating?

Usually playful. If it follows a compliment or pickup line, they're admitting it was cheesy on purpose, which is flirty and low-risk. If it's next to food emojis, they're asking about dinner. Alone with no context, assume they want cheese and respond accordingly.

Emoji combos

Origin story

Cheese itself is roughly 7,500 years old. Researchers documented residues from cheesemaking on pottery shards in Poland dating to around 5500 BCE, making it one of humanity's oldest processed foods. The emoji, obviously, took a bit longer.

The cheese wedge emoji was part of the 2015 Unicode 8.0 food expansion, a batch that also added burrito 🌯, hot dog 🌭, taco 🌮, popcorn 🍿, and turkey 🦃. It shipped as CHEESE WEDGE and landed on Apple's iOS 9.1 in October 2015, just in time for Thanksgiving content.

The holes are a choice. Real cheese mostly doesn't have them. Those "eyes" are specific to Swiss-style cheeses like Emmental and are caused by carbon dioxide released during aging, trapped by specific bacteria. When the change.org petition started asking for a holeless cheese option in 2018, organizers argued the current emoji misrepresents cheeses from countries like Poland, France, Italy, and the UK. The petition failed, but it did surface a real issue: the Swiss look became the default look.

Design history

2015Cheese wedge approved in Unicode 8.0 / Emoji 1.0 as U+1F9C0, part of the L2/14-174 proposal batch↗
2015Ships on Apple iOS 9.1 (October), the first major vendor to render it, with a yellow-orange Swiss-style wedge
2016Added to Google Noto and Samsung One UI with slightly different hole patterns. The Swiss-style consensus forms early
2018A Polish-led change.org petition asks Apple to add more cheese varieties, arguing the Swiss default misrepresents European cheese traditions↗
2024Food TikTok cements 🧀 as the default tag for cheese pull videos, butter boards' edible cousin cheese boards, and Cooper's Hill cheese rolling coverage

Around the world

In the United States, 🧀 is food, money slang, and Wisconsin. The cheesehead hat, a foam cheese wedge worn by Green Bay Packers fans, started as a Chicago-versus-Wisconsin insult in the 1980s and got reclaimed. Foamation, the company that made the hats, was bought by the Packers in 2023, making the cheesehead officially licensed NFL merch.

In the United Kingdom, 🧀 carries a specific cultural weight thanks to Cooper's Hill cheese rolling in Gloucestershire. Every Spring Bank Holiday, competitors hurl themselves down a 200-yard near-vertical slope chasing a wheel of Double Gloucester. British users also read 🧀 against "cheesed off" (annoyed) and "big cheese" (important person).

In France and Italy, the Swiss-hole design is mildly insulting to serious cheese culture. A 2018 Polish-led petition pushed Apple to add varieties that reflect French, Italian, and Polish traditions, none of which have holes. The petition didn't succeed, but it surfaced real frustration in countries with appellation-protected cheese traditions.

In Japan, 🧀 appears in viral "cheese-in" (cheese-stuffed) dishes like cheese buldak and cheese tteokbokki spillovers from Korean food TikTok. It also shows up in Line sticker combos attached to mouse characters, where the cheese-and-mouse pairing is universally readable.

In hip-hop and Black American culture, 🧀 is money. "Get the cheese," "stack the cheddar," "that's cheese" all predate the emoji by decades. The OED formalized this sense in its 2023 update, crediting hip-hop's wide dissemination.

What does 🧀 mean as money?

"Cheese" has been American slang for money since the mid-1800s. The Notorious B.I.G.'s 1994 line "Touch my cheddar, feel my Beretta" pushed the word "cheddar" into hip-hop's money vocabulary. In 2023 the Oxford English Dictionary formally added the money sense. Today "securing the cheese" or "making cheese" reads as cash talk instantly.

Why is 🧀 associated with the Green Bay Packers?

Wisconsin is America's biggest cheese-producing state, and in the 1980s Chicago sports fans used "cheesehead" as an insult against Wisconsin fans. Wisconsin reclaimed it. Foamation started making foam cheesehead hats in 1987, they became Packers merch, and the Packers bought Foamation outright in 2023.

What is Cooper's Hill cheese rolling?

An annual race at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, England, on the Spring Bank Holiday. Competitors chase a 9-pound wheel of Double Gloucester down a near-vertical 200-yard slope. Injuries are routine. Winners get the cheese. German YouTuber Tom Kopke won it back-to-back in 2023 and 2024, and his "I risked my life for this" quote became a viral caption.

Viral moments

2024TikTok

Tom Kopke's back-to-back Cooper's Hill win

German YouTuber Tom Kopke won Cooper's Hill cheese rolling for a second consecutive year in May 2024. His post-race quote, "I risked my life for this. It's my cheese, back-to-back," became the caption on thousands of TikToks tagged 🧀. The clip of him tumbling down the 200-yard slope chasing a Double Gloucester wheel racked up millions of views across CBS News and BBC accounts.

2021Netflix

Netflix's "We Are the Champions" cheese rolling episode

Rainn Wilson narrated a six-part Netflix documentary series that opened with the Cooper's Hill cheese rolling competition. The episode introduced a mainstream streaming audience to the chaos, and the event's social media presence surged. We Are the Champions gave the race its biggest platform push since the 2010s BBC coverage.

1994Music

"Touch my cheddar, feel my Beretta"

The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Warning" dropped the line that popularized "cheddar" as money slang. The emoji didn't exist yet, but by the time 🧀 arrived in 2015 the association was already baked in. Twenty years of hip-hop using "cheese" and "cheddar" for cash guaranteed the emoji would pull double duty.

Often confused with

🍕 is the cheese pizza emoji, which is cheese-centric but a complete dish. 🧀 is the ingredient. Use 🍕 for delivery, 🧀 for charcuterie.

🍕 Pizza

🍕 is the cheese pizza emoji, which is cheese-centric but a complete dish. 🧀 is the ingredient. Use 🍕 for delivery, 🧀 for charcuterie.

🧈 is butter (smooth, easy, BTS). 🧀 is cheese (cheesy, money, Wisconsin). Shared yellow palette, different meanings.

🧈 Butter

🧈 is butter (smooth, easy, BTS). 🧀 is cheese (cheesy, money, Wisconsin). Shared yellow palette, different meanings.

🥛 is milk, the upstream dairy product. 🧀 is what milk becomes when you add bacteria and patience.

🥛 Glass Of Milk

🥛 is milk, the upstream dairy product. 🧀 is what milk becomes when you add bacteria and patience.

Is 🧀 the same as 🍕?

No. 🧀 is the ingredient (charcuterie, cheese boards, sprinkled on pasta). 🍕 is the finished dish. Use 🧀 when you're talking about cheese as cheese, use 🍕 when you're ordering delivery.

Do's and don'ts

✓Use for cheese content, charcuterie boards, pizza, and anything involving actual dairy
✓Use to flag your own cheesy jokes (it's a wink, not a cringe)
✓Use for money talk when the tone is playful: "stacking cheese"
✓Pair with 🐭 for the universal cartoon gag

DON’T

✗Don't send it after someone's sincere compliment unless you want to flatten the moment
✗Don't use the money-slang reading in formal or cross-generational work chats
✗Don't assume everyone reads the holes as Swiss. French and Italian users sometimes find it annoying

Caption ideas

Aesthetic sets

Type it as text

🤔The holes are a specific cheese, not all cheese

The eyes in the emoji are specific to Swiss-style cheeses like Emmental. They're caused by carbon dioxide produced by Propionibacterium freudenreichii during aging, trapped in the paste. Cheddar, Gouda, Brie, Parmesan, feta, halloumi: none of them have holes. The emoji picked a global minority look and crowned it king.

🎲"Cheddar" as money predates hip-hop

"Cheese" as slang for money goes back to the mid-19th century, long before it became a rap staple. Biggie's 1994 line "Touch my cheddar, feel my Beretta" mainstreamed "cheddar" specifically, but the underlying equation of cheese with cash has been floating around American English for roughly 170 years.

🤔"Big cheese" probably comes from Urdu

The phrase "big cheese" (important person) likely comes from the Urdu word chiz, meaning "thing," imported by British soldiers returning from colonial India. They said "the real chiz," and somewhere along the line English speakers heard "cheese" and ran with it.

🎲"Say cheese" made Americans smile

Before the 1940s, most people looked serious in photos. The phrase "say cheese" was popularized after 1943, credited to U.S. ambassador Joseph E. Davies, who liked how the "ee" sound parted lips into a grin. The 20th century's shift to smiling photos is partly a dairy product's fault.

Fun facts

•Cooper's Hill cheese rolling in Gloucestershire sends competitors down a 200-yard, near-vertical slope chasing a 9-pound wheel of Double Gloucester. Injuries are routine. The winner gets the cheese.
•Wisconsin's cheesehead foam hat started as a Chicago insult in the 1980s. Wisconsinites reclaimed it. The Packers bought the manufacturer Foamation in 2023, making the hat official NFL merchandise.
•The earliest known cheese residue was found on Neolithic pottery in Poland dating to roughly 5500 BCE, making cheesemaking about 7,500 years old.
•The Polish-led change.org petition in 2018 asked Apple for holeless cheese emojis representing French, Italian, British, and Polish varieties. It surfaced real frustration in AOC-protected cheese countries that the Swiss look had become the global default.
•"Cheddar" as slang for money was formally added to the OED as a money sense in a 2023 update, crediting hip-hop for popularizing it.
•The Big Cheese probably comes from the Urdu word chiz ("thing"), imported by British colonial returnees who said "the real chiz" and had it anglicized into "cheese."
•Netflix's We Are the Champions opened its 2021 series with the Cooper's Hill cheese roll. The episode introduced streaming audiences to what is easily one of the most dangerous Bank Holiday traditions in Europe.
•Before "say cheese," photographers used "say prunes" in the Victorian era to keep mouths small. The shift happened in the 1940s, credited to U.S. ambassador Joseph E. Davies.

In pop culture

•The Notorious B.I.G., "Warning" (1994). "Touch my cheddar, feel my Beretta" mainstreamed "cheddar" as hip-hop money slang. The line is quoted in every article about the word's evolution.
•Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling (ongoing). The annual Gloucestershire event is the single most-memed cheese tradition in the world. Tom Kopke's 2024 back-to-back win produced the viral quote "I risked my life for this."
•Chuck E. Cheese (1977 to present). Nolan Bushnell's animatronic pizza chain attached "Cheese" to a generation's birthday parties. The brand's FNAF-adjacent horror memes became their own TikTok subculture in the 2020s.
•Wallace & Gromit (1989 to present). Aardman's claymation universe runs on cheese. Wallace's "A Grand Day Out" built an entire rocket to reach the moon, which he believed was made of Wensleydale. Wensleydale Creamery's sales spiked 23% after the films.
•The Office (US), "Diversity Day" (2005). "Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy. Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me." Michael Scott's corporate cheese is its own genre, and 🧀 is the emoji people drop in YouTube comments under those clips.
•BTS adjacent: Butter Beats. Not cheese, but the surrounding dairy-as-metaphor trend shows up in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), where Gwen says "cheese it" to Miles, a deep-cut 19th-century slang revival in a mainstream superhero film.

Trivia

Which NFL team's fans wear foam cheesehead hats?

Which rapper's 1994 track is credited with mainstreaming "cheddar" as money slang?

What event happens every Spring Bank Holiday in Gloucestershire, England?

What are the holes in Swiss cheese actually called?

The phrase "big cheese" (important person) probably comes from what language?

For developers

•Cheese wedge is , added in Unicode 8.0 / Emoji 1.0 (2015). The codepoint is technically in the "Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs" block.
•Shortcodes: and on most platforms. Slack and GitHub both accept the short form.
•Design consensus is Swiss-style (yellow wedge with holes) across Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft. If you're designing a custom emoji pack, deviate only if you have a specific reason.
•For cheese pull or charcuterie UIs, pair with (🍷), (🥖), and (🍇). These four are the charcuterie canon.

Why is the cheese emoji Swiss-style with holes?

Apple picked the Swiss design in 2015 and every other vendor copied the convention. Real cheese mostly doesn't have holes. They're specific to Emmental and other Swiss-style cheeses, caused by carbon dioxide trapped during aging. A 2018 Polish-led petition asked Apple to add holeless varieties and got nowhere, but it did highlight how much the default design annoys French, Italian, and Polish cheese traditions.

When was the cheese emoji added?

Unicode 8.0 in June 2015, part of proposal L2/14-174. It shipped on Apple iOS 9.1 in October 2015 alongside turkey 🦃, hot dog 🌭, burrito 🌯, taco 🌮, and popcorn 🍿, a batch considered a turning point for savory food emojis.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.