a type of white cheese with a flaky texture
a breed of sheep with long woolly fleece
First recorded in 1880–85; after Wensleydale, Yorkshire, England, where it is made
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Charles Barnett, assistant head teacher at Wensleydale School and Sixth Form, welcomed the initial idea but said it took "a very short amount of time to realise it wouldn't work effectively for us".
From BBC • Apr. 23, 2023
A previous version of this article linked Wensleydale, the cheese made famous in the animated stories of Wallace and Gromit, to Lancashire.
From Washington Post • Dec. 17, 2022
Picturesque Askrigg in Wensleydale offers an enchanting five-mile round-trip to two fabulous but unheralded waterfalls, Mill Gill Force and Whitfield Gill Force.
From The Guardian • Aug. 1, 2019
Non-specialist references extend into the modern era with a scholarly entry on two children’s television characters, Wallace and Gromit, and how their programme caused sales of Wensleydale to surge.
From Economist • Dec. 20, 2016
I ate my block of Wensleydale and broken Jacob's crackers, wishing I'd brought some water.
From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
