: one of the hard bony appendages that are borne on the jaws or in many of the lower vertebrates on other bones in the walls of the mouth or pharynx and serve especially for the prehension and mastication of food and as weapons of offense and defense
b
: any of various usually hard and sharp processes especially about the mouth of an invertebrate
2
: a projection resembling or suggesting the tooth of an animal in shape, arrangement, or action
a saw tooth
: such as
a
: any of the regular projections on the circumference or sometimes the face of a wheel that engage with corresponding projections on another wheel especially to transmit force : cog
b
: a small sharp-pointed marginal lobe or process on a plant
3
a
teeth plural: effective means of enforcement
drug laws with teeth
b
: something that injures, tortures, devours, or destroys
The dentist will have to pull that tooth.
You should brush your teeth every morning and night.
She clenched her teeth in anger.
He has a set of false teeth.
the teeth of a saw
The labor union showed that it has teeth.
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McCormack and colleagues extracted zinc from the fossil teeth, an element that occurs in isotopes of different weights.—David Bressan, Forbes.com, 26 May 2025 Yes, the argument that Towns needs to be more aggressive in demanding the ball has teeth.—Kristian Winfield, New York Daily News, 26 May 2025 Hundreds of millions of years later, our teeth — which evolved from that armor — have inherited that same ability to sense things like pain and temperature.—Ari Daniel, NPR, 24 May 2025 Naked mole rats – a social, subterranean cold-blooded mammal that looks like a hot dog with teeth – generate fevers in response to infection, despite their unusual physiology.—Harry Bernheim, The Conversation, 23 May 2025 See All Example Sentences for tooth
Word History
Etymology
Middle English, from Old English tōth; akin to Old High German zand tooth, Latin dent-, dens, Greek odont-, odous
First Known Use
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a
Time Traveler
The first known use of tooth was
before the 12th century
: any of the hard bony appendages that are borne on the jaws and serve especially for the prehension and mastication of food see milk tooth, permanent tooth
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