"Savageduck" wrote

| WHY?
|
| ...because saying "Limburger", "cheddar", "quantum",
| "indubitably", or especially "Trump" doesn't produce the ****-eating,
| out of context, toothy grin that saying "cheese" does.
|

?? When I say cheese I just slightly open my mouth.
(Whisky-Dave's link notwithstanding. I certainly don't
turn up the corners of my mouth. All of the sounds
are produced without using the teeth. In fact, cheese
is an unusually flat word, requiring almost no movement
to enunciate it clearly.)

I'm not sure there's any word that requires much more.
F and V require upper teeth against lower lip, but who
wants to look bucktoothed?. If saying a word produced
a grin (or frown) then it would get very confusing trying
to interpret speech.

Maybe the tradition was just a silliness to make people
smile with amusement. Or a distraction so that they
would drop self-consciousness for a moment.