(click for larger image in new window) n.
pl.teeth (tēth)
One of a set of hard, bonelike structures rooted in sockets in the jaws of vertebrates, typically composed of a core of soft pulp surrounded by a layer of hard dentin that is coated with cementum or enamel at the crown and used for biting or chewing food or as a means of attack or defense.
A similar structure in invertebrates, such as one of the pointed denticles or ridges on the exoskeleton of an arthropod or the shell of a mollusk.
Something that injures or destroys with force. Often used in the plural: the teeth of the blizzard.
teeth Effective means of enforcement; muscle: "This . . . puts real teeth into something where there has been only lip service"(Ellen Convisser).
A projecting part resembling a tooth in shape or function, as on a comb, gear, or saw.
A small, notched projection along a margin, especially of a leaf. Also called dent2.
A rough surface, as of paper or metal.
Something that injures or destroys with force. Often used in the plural: the teeth of the blizzard.
teeth Effective means of enforcement; muscle: "This . . . puts real teeth into something where there has been only lip service"(Ellen Convisser).
Taste or appetite: She always had a sweet tooth.
v.
(tōōth, tōōth) toothed, tooth·ing, tooths
v.
tr.
To furnish (a tool, for example) with teeth.
To make a jagged edge on.
v.
intr. To become interlocked; mesh.
[Middle English, from Old English tōth; see dent- in Indo-European roots.]
Word History: Eating, biting, teeth, and dentists are related not only logically but etymologically; that is, the roots of the words eat, tooth, and dentist have a common origin. The Proto-Indo-European root *ed-, meaning "to eat" and the source of our word eat, originally meant "to bite." A participial form of *ed- in this sense was *dent-, "biting," which came to mean "tooth." Our word tooth comes from *dont-, a form of *dent-, with sound changes that resulted in the Germanic word *tanthuz. This word became Old English tōth and Modern English tooth. Meanwhile the Proto-Indo-European form *dent- itself became in Latin dēns (stem dent-), "tooth," from which is derived our word dentist. We find a descendant of another Proto-Indo-European form *(o)dont- in the word orthodontist.
(tōōth) 
