Ok, how in the heck did the term cheezy (sometimes spelled cheesy) come to mean showy and/or cheap?  Here’s a good answer: the Urdu word “chiz,” meaning a “thing,” became used by British colonialists to mean a “big thing.”  One can easily imagine the proper Englishman gentleman’s disdain for something obvious and showy.

I knew it could not have anything to do with cheese, which is, after all, ambrosia.