The Moon is made of green cheese
| The Moon is made of green cheese | |
|---|---|
| SATIRE OR PARODY | |
| "The Moon is made of cheese." | |
| Domain | Language, Folklore & Urban Legends |
| Tactic | Satire or Parody False Context |
| Era | Historical |
| First seen | 1546 |
| Origin | An English proverb recorded by John Heywood in 1546 and later used as a joke about gullibility |
| Last reviewed | 2026-11-04 |
| Further reading: books on Language, Folklore & Urban Legends | |
The claim that the Moon is made of (green) cheese is a folk joke, not a belief anyone seriously held. It is old, famous and wrong, and it is a useful example of how a figure of speech gets repeated as if it were a claim.
What the evidence shows
- Where it comes from. The phrase appears in English writing of the 1520s to 1540s: John Frith (1529) and John Heywood's collection of proverbs (1546), as an example of something absurd that a fool might believe. In 1638, John Wilkins wrote that one could soon persuade country peasants that the Moon is made of green cheese, again as a joke about credulity.
- What "green" means. In this phrase "green" means young or unaged, not the color. A green cheese is a fresh one.
- Was it ever believed? Reference sources note there was never a real, widespread popular belief that the Moon is cheese. The phrase was always an expression for an obviously ridiculous idea. A claim sometimes made that Rabelais coined it is not established.
- What the Moon is made of. Six Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972 returned about 380 kilograms of lunar material (sources give figures from 380.96 to 382 kg). The samples are mostly basalt from the dark lowland maria and anorthosite from the bright highlands, with the oldest highland rocks more than 4 billion years old. None of it resembles cheese.
- Density check. The Moon's average density is roughly 3.3 grams per cubic centimeter, about three times that of cheese.
Why it persists
It is catchy, easy to say and costless to repeat, and it has become a stock example of a silly belief. It is also used in cartoons and children's stories, which keeps it in circulation as a joke.
Lessons for readers
- Some 'claims' are jokes. Check whether anyone ever believed them before trying to debunk them.
- A figure of speech can be repeated for centuries without ever having been a belief.
- Samples and measurements answer the factual question quickly.
See also
- The Great Moon Hoax
- The Apollo Moon landings were faked
- People once really believed the Moon was made of green cheese
- The Sun is made of cheese
Sources
- John Heywood, A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue, 1546.
- John Wilkins, The Discovery of a World in the Moone, 1638.
- Wikipedia, 'The Moon is made of green cheese' (summary of origins and use).
- NASA, Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility, Johnson Space Center: Apollo sample inventory and composition.