The MW Buzzword was parmesan. A brief list of cheeses from various locations (Colby, Cheddar, Gorgonzola, and Parma) was listed there.

What I'm wondering about is why the 'a' in Parma was dropped and an 'e' replaced it. Is this a rule for adjective formation in Italian? Emanuela, are you looking in?

For more about the cheese, including its ties to Parma, try here:
http://www.parmigiano-reggiano.it/home.cfm

Given that it's the "parmigiano" that gives English its "parmesan", one might ask with equal validity, "why was the 'g' dropped and an 's' used in its stead?" Perhaps the answer to both questions is that the changes were made to underscore the gulf between parmesan cheese and parmigiano-reggiano, the one being no more than a vaguely sound-alike knock-off of the other.

Was this the alternate name of "Karma Chameleon"? (Culture Club/Boy George)
Oh, how the mind works...

Karma Chameleon

I was right there with you, amnow...

I'm not quite sure where the g came from (it might be from a dialect loanword). The term in Italian for an inhabitant of Parma is parmense which looks like a learned borrowing from Latin (usually -ensis > -ese in Italian, cf. Verona ~ veronese, Genova ~ genovese). Remember the English did all kinds of things to placenames. My favorite is Leghorn from Livorno. My grandmother always refered to parmesan cheese with the Ligurian dialect word piaxentin /pijaʒentiŋ/ not because we used cheese from Piacenza on our pasta, but because her mother no doubt did back in Genova, although for pasta al pesto pecorino romano or sardo is used. Hmmm, pesto.

That makes three of *us, amnow.