Cheerios is a breakfast cereal: small hard rings made from oats, usually eaten with milk. They are a little sweet, but not like chocolate cereal — more like a plain, toasty oat circle. The name began in 1941 as Cheerioats, from cheery + oats; in 1945 it was shortened to Cheerios after another company, Quaker Oats, said they had the rights to the word oats. In the United States it is a very ordinary breakfast; in Taiwan you will see the English name on the box. Though actually, people also eat them dry as a snack, and shops now sell many flavours, but the original idea is those little oat rings.