Parmesan is a very hard, dry Italian cheese, pale yellow, with a strong, salty, nutty taste. People grate it over pasta, soup, and salad. The name points to Parma, a city in northern Italy; the most famous kind is Parmigiano-Reggiano, which Italian law protects. Though actually, in many shops outside Italy the word on the label is looser: it may be a similar hard cheese made somewhere else, not the protected Italian one. In English it is usually a mass noun — some Parmesan, a little Parmesan — unless you mean a whole wedge. It is often written with a capital P, like a place-name.