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Tooth   /tuθ/   Listen
noun
Tooth  n.  (pl. teeth)  
1.
(Anat.) One of the hard, bony appendages which are borne on the jaws, or on other bones in the walls of the mouth or pharynx of most vertebrates, and which usually aid in the prehension and mastication of food. Note: The hard parts of teeth are principally made up of dentine, or ivory, and a very hard substance called enamel. These are variously combined in different animals. Each tooth consist of three parts, a crown, or body, projecting above the gum, one or more fangs imbedded in the jaw, and the neck, or intermediate part. In some animals one or more of the teeth are modified into tusks which project from the mouth, as in both sexes of the elephant and of the walrus, and in the male narwhal. In adult man there are thirty-two teeth, composed largely of dentine, but the crowns are covered with enamel, and the fangs with a layer of bone called cementum. Of the eight teeth on each half of each jaw, the two in front are incisors, then come one canine, cuspid, or dog tooth, two bicuspids, or false molars, and three molars, or grinding teeth. The milk, or temporary, teeth are only twenty in number, there being two incisors, one canine, and two molars on each half of each jaw. The last molars, or wisdom teeth, usually appear long after the others, and occasionally do not appear above the jaw at all. "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!"
2.
Fig.: Taste; palate. "These are not dishes for thy dainty tooth."
3.
Any projection corresponding to the tooth of an animal, in shape, position, or office; as, the teeth, or cogs, of a cogwheel; a tooth, prong, or tine, of a fork; a tooth, or the teeth, of a rake, a saw, a file, a card.
4.
(a)
A projecting member resembling a tenon, but fitting into a mortise that is only sunk, not pierced through.
(b)
One of several steps, or offsets, in a tusk. See Tusk.
5.
(Nat. Hist.) An angular or prominence on any edge; as, a tooth on the scale of a fish, or on a leaf of a plant; specifically (Bot.), One of the appendages at the mouth of the capsule of a moss. See Peristome.
6.
(Zool.) Any hard calcareous or chitinous organ found in the mouth of various invertebrates and used in feeding or procuring food; as, the teeth of a mollusk or a starfish.
In spite of the teeth, in defiance of opposition; in opposition to every effort.
In the teeth, directly; in direct opposition; in front. "Nor strive with all the tempest in my teeth."
To cast in the teeth, to report reproachfully; to taunt or insult one with.
Tooth and nail, as if by biting and scratching; with one's utmost power; by all possible means. "I shall fight tooth and nail for international copyright."
Tooth coralline (Zool.), any sertularian hydroid.
Tooth edge, the sensation excited in the teeth by grating sounds, and by the touch of certain substances, as keen acids.
Tooth key, an instrument used to extract teeth by a motion resembling that of turning a key.
Tooth net, a large fishing net anchored. (Scot.)
Tooth ornament. (Arch.) Same as Dogtooth, n., 2.
Tooth powder, a powder for cleaning the teeth; a dentifrice.
Tooth rash. (Med.) See Red-gum, 1.
To show the teeth, to threaten. "When the Law shows her teeth, but dares not bite."
To the teeth, in open opposition; directly to one's face. "That I shall live, and tell him to his teeth."


verb
Tooth  v. t.  (past & past part. toothed; pres. part. toothing)  
1.
To furnish with teeth. "The twin cards toothed with glittering wire."
2.
To indent; to jag; as, to tooth a saw.
3.
To lock into each other. See Tooth, n., 4.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Tooth" Quotes from Famous Books



... house a quarter of an hour, you go a-smearing your wet face against the expensive mourning that Mrs. Richards is a-wearing for your ma!" With this remonstrance, young Spitfire, whose real name was Susan Nipper, detached the child from her new friend by a wrench—as if she were a tooth. But she seemed to do it more in the sharp exercise of her official functions, ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... stretched the settlement of Horse Shoe to the promontory of Whale Mouth Point, with its outlying reef of rocks curved inwards like the vast submerged jaw of some marine monster, through whose blunt, tooth-like projections the ship-long swell of the Pacific streamed and fell. On the southern shore the light yellow sands of Punta de las Concepcion glittered like sunshine all the way to the olive-gardens ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... me!" cried the Saint, in a hollow voice, and casting upon him his stony eye, drew poor Larry after him, as the bridal guest was drawn by the lapidary glance of the Ancient Mariner; or, as Larry himself afterwards expressed it, "as a jaw tooth is wrinched out of an ould woman with a pair of pinchers." The Saint strode before him in silence, not in the least incommoded by the stones and rubbish, which at every step sadly contributed to the discomfiture of Larry's shins, who followed his marble conductor into a low vault, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... sides clothed with perpendicular gardens and vineyards, and with little gray towns clustering under the ledges on its sheer walls like mud-daubers' nests beneath an eave. Now, perched on a ridgy outcrop of rock like a single tooth in a snaggled reptilian jaw, would be a deserted tower, making a fellow think of the good old feudal days when the robber barons robbed the traveler instead of as at present, when the job is so completely attended to by the pirates who weigh and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the dogs—great, lank, cowering, tooth-slavering brutes. I followed my father till we came to the feeding-troughs. Then he bade me to stand where I was till he should set their meat in order. So he vanished behind, the barriers. Then, when he had prepared the beasts' horrid ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett


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