What other recurring codewords appear in the Epstein files and how have investigators interpreted them?
Executive summary
The recently released Epstein files contain dozens of recurring slangy terms — from seemingly benign foods like “cheese,” “pizza,” and “grape soda” to childhood‑brand phrases such as “Snow White” or “Disney Princesses” — that journalists, lawyers and some federal agents flagged as possible euphemisms for young women or trafficking activity in communications tied to Jeffrey Epstein and his circle [1] [2] [3]. At the same time, official reviewers cautioned that mention in the files is not proof of wrongdoing and the Department of Justice has said investigators found no credible evidence Epstein used material to blackmail associates or that a definitive “client list” existed in the files [4] [5].
1. The words that jump out in the trove
Journalists and social accounts homed in on a handful of words that recur unusually often in the released documents — notably “cheese,” which reporting counted in the high hundreds to more than a thousand appearances; food‑linked phrases such as “pizza,” “grape soda,” and “Chinese cookie”; and nicknames or shorthand like “bobby” — while civil filings also highlighted references to “Snow White” and other Disney princesses as phrases used in some communications [1] [6] [2] [3].
2. How investigators and courts framed search terms
Litigation over Ghislaine Maxwell’s and Epstein‑related discovery shows lawyers explicitly asked for searches using wildcard operators and proximity connectors — examples reported include “joint w/3 defend” and qualifiers like “high w/3 school,” “school w/3 girl,” and “sex w/3 toy*” — indicating investigators and lawyers were looking for patterns and contextual uses, not just raw word counts [7].
3. Interpretations: euphemism, code, or coincidence?
Some lawyers for accusers and certain reporters treated repeated, out‑of‑place food and children’s phrases as possible euphemisms for young women or transactional invitations, a reading amplified by specific civil complaints and by the fact that investigators compiled glossaries of slang used in trafficking probes — a practice intended to help surface suspect communications amid millions of pages [3] [7].
4. How journalists documented frequency and odd context
Multiple outlets pointed out that words like “cheese” appear in contexts that read oddly if taken literally — for example, emails containing sentences about “millions of babies” or “vegetable cream cheese” — and used those anomalies to suggest nonliteral usage, while news organizations reported the raw frequencies alongside cautions that mere mention is not proof of criminality [1] [6] [8].
5. Official cautions and competing explanations
Federal reviewers and the DOJ have undercut simple code‑word narratives by noting limits of the material: the Justice Department said no client list was found and that investigators did not uncover credible evidence Epstein used material to blackmail associates, and other reporting stresses that names or words appearing in a file do not equal allegations or charges against named parties [4] [5].
6. Why context — not counts — matters to investigators
The files include not just emails but investigators’ charts, tips summaries and unredacted interview material that the FBI and prosecutors used to map alleged networks and timelines, which is why search terms, proximity queries and human review matter more than raw frequency counts when assessing whether a term functioned as code in criminal activity [9] [10] [5].
7. The evidentiary gap that remains
Public reporting shows a pattern of suspicious language and explains how lawyers and investigators hunted for it, but the released documents and official statements do not supply a forensic Rosetta Stone proving each term’s meaning, and the files’ scale plus redaction errors further complicate definitive interpretation — available sources document the searches and hypotheses but stop short of decisive proof [3] [11] [5].