teeth

n.

pl. of Tooth.

Teeth
v. i.

[imp. & p. p. Teethed ; p. pr. & vb. n. Teething.]
To breed, or grow, teeth.

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Teeth have a distinctive anatomy and physiology that is different to the biology of the skeleton. The great eighteenth-century zoologist and anatomist Baron Georges Cuvier was once quoted as saying, ‘show me your teeth and I will tell you who you are.’

Our teeth tell us something about our ancestry, ethnic background, and age, our environment and our health. Teeth are one of the hardest tissues in our body and a valuable source of evidence in understanding the biology of ancient communities throughout the evolution of mankind. Teeth can be used as part of our repertoire of behaviour, by showing or ‘baring’ one's teeth as a means of aggression, or by adding them to a perfect smile. The movement of teeth during eating can stimulate reflex salivation or can limit damage if excessive force is applied. Teeth can therefore serve a variety of functions in our lives from the time that the first deciduous (milk or primary) teeth appear, a process commonly known as teething. By the age of 3 the deciduous teeth are fully formed and by the age of 6 the first permanent teeth appear by displacing their predecessors. A complete permanent dentition (set of teeth) is present at or around the age of 18 years. In the complete deciduous dentition there are 20 teeth, 10 in each jaw. In the complete permanent dentition there are 32 teeth, 16 in each jaw. There are different classes of teeth each with a particular role in eating; incisors (Latin dentes incisivi; cutting teeth), canines (Latin dentes canini; dog teeth), premolars, and molars (Latin dentes molars; grinding teeth).

Each tooth is divided into a crown that projects into the mouth and a root that is embedded into the jaws. The crown is coated with heavily mineralized enamel and the root with a thin layer of cement. The visible crown surface is usually smooth, translucent, and white but may show defects in thickness, mineralization, and colour. During development these defects can be attributed to an interruption of the normal growth processes due to malnutrition or diseases (such as rickets and measles) or to high levels of fluoride in drinking water. Betel nut chewing and smoking can also lead to discolouration.

The bulk of the tooth consists of the bony substance dentine, surrounding the soft inner pulp that contains blood vessels and nerves. In the crown, the pulp has small conical extensions (pulp horns) into the cusps of the tooth, and in the root it extends along one or more canals to the tooth apex, where the nerves and blood vessels enter. The density of nerve fibres in dental pulp is very high; in the mid crown of the average tooth there may be as many as 3000 axon branches with approximately 2000 nerve endings per mm², the highest density in the body. The role these nerve fibres play in the normal sensations from teeth has been a point of conjecture for dentists for over a century, but whatever the stimulus it invariably leads to the pain usually described as toothache which, according to Robert Burns was, ‘the hell o' a' disease’.

Sufferers are well aware that a tooth can become acutely sensitive. Yet there are no nerve endings on the exposed surface. The mystery of the process that activates the nerve endings inside the teeth has only recently been solved. The dentine contains a honeycomb of dentinal tubules that radiate out from the pulp chamber, tapering along their length and increasing in spacing. At the pulp end of dentinal tubules is a layer of cells called odontoblasts. These cells secrete the initial predentine matrix and mineralize it to produce mature dentine. At the dentinal surface of each odontoblast is a process arising from the cell, which tapers as it penetrates up to half the thickness of the dentine. Some of the dentinal tubules containing odontoblast processes also have nerve fibres and most, if not all, also contain dentinal fluid that is formed from the blood capillaries in the pulp. Under normal circumstances the whole system is in equilibrium, with little movement of dentinal fluid, and the tooth is relatively insensitive. Only when the dentinal tubules are open to the atmosphere through damage, disease such as caries, or wear of the enamel (through the excessive use of a toothbrush or acidic drinks) can the dentinal fluid flow out through the tubules into the mouth (see figure of exposed dentine, showing movement of dentinal fluid). Despite the lack of nerve endings at the exposed surface, the area is now acutely sensitive to thermal, mechanical, and osmotic stimuli. An explanation for this apparent paradox involves the nerve fibres at the pulpal end of the dentinal tubules, and the dentinal fluid, which forms a hydraulic bridge. Most investigators now agree that the movement of fluid due to changes in pressure or in surface tension at the open end of exposed dentinal tubules is transferred through the odontoblast process to nerve endings at the base of the tubules. The dentinal fluid in the tubules can now move when a stimulus is applied, and it is this movement that is picked up by the nerve endings — the sensory receptors. All manner of stimuli would then cause fluid movement; temperature — heat greater than 45°C, cold less than 27°C; mechanical — use of a dental bur, a probe, or a toothbrush; removal of fluid by an air stream, absorbent materials, or hyperosmotic solutions such as strong sugar solutions. Blocking the dentinal tubules using dental resins restores the equilibrium and the tooth will once again become relatively insensitive. Thus the hydraulic or hydrodynamic theory of movement of fluid through the dentinal tubules goes some way to explaining this exquisitely sensitive and unique system of receptors that occasionally gives rise to the ‘sensitivity’ of teeth.

A schematic diagram representing a cross section of part of a tooth with exposed dentine. The pulp chamber is richly supplied by nerve fibres and blood vessels. Exposing the dentine allows the fluid content of the dentinal tubules to move, thus exciting the sensory nerve endings at their base; this eventually gives rise to dental pain

— Duncan Banks

Bibliography

• Bradley, R. M. (1995). Essentials of oral physiology. Mosby, St Louis

See also dentistry.

Any departure from the normal pattern in the way a baby cuts its first tooth could be significant. Teeth usually show through the lower gums first; ‘If a child tooths first in the upper jaw, it is considered ominous of its dying in its infancy’ (Brand, 1849: ii. 87). The belief was still remembered in Halifax in 1957, when a man told Iona Opie: ‘They used to say that a child who cut the first tooth upward was almost sure to live; if the first tooth was cut downward it was not so sure to live.’ To cut teeth unusually early was also thought meaningful, but there were two interpretations. One, recorded in 1659 in the proverb ‘Soon todd [toothed], soon with God’, was that the baby would soon be dead; the other, expressed in a later proverb ‘Soon teeth, soon toes’, was that the mother would quickly be pregnant again.

If any teeth were already showing at the child's birth, this was taken to mean that he or she would grow up vicious. Richard III was supposed to have been born thus, according to Shakespeare (3 Henry the Sixth, v. vi). In the 1950s, Christina Hole wrote:

To be born with teeth is an extremely bad sign. The usual theory is that it foretells death by violence, but one midwife informed me a few years ago that the true meaning is even worse. ‘I never speak of it,’ she said, ‘and if anyone asks me I deny it, for the sake of the mother; but it means the child will grow up to be a murderer.’ It is possible that this is the older form of the superstition. A milder version gives it as a sign of a very bad temper; and in some districts it has been watered down to a vague prophecy of simple bad luck [Folklore 68 (1957), 413]. By 1987, a correspondent writing to the Daily Mirror [28 August 1987, p. 20] reports being puzzled by two contrasting beliefs—one, that such a child will be extremely clever, the other that he or she is born to be hanged.

If a child was having difficulty cutting its first teeth, a little bag containing animal's teeth or adult human teeth might be hung round its neck as a charm. In London around 1905 calf's teeth were sold in street markets for this purpose, but it was far more common for girls and young women to keep any of their own teeth which had been extracted, to help their babies later (Lovett, 1925: 25-6). In Herefordshire at about the same period, the bag held woodlice, or a few hairs from the cross on a donkey's back (Leather, 1912: 70, 81); in Shropshire, a necklace of rowan twigs was worn (Burne, 1883: 195).

When a mild tooth fell out, it was important to dispose of it correctly. One method, known to Aubrey (1686/1880: 11) and still widely used up to the mid-20th century, was to throw it in the fire at once, often after rubbing salt on it, and sometimes saying a charm:

Fire, fire, burn a bone,
God send me another tooth again;
A straight one,
A white one,
And in the same place.

or:

Black tooth, blue tooth,
Please God send me a new tooth—

which, as a correspondent from Sheffield noted in the Guardian (letters page, 20 Oct. 1988), ‘never failed to work’. One traditional explanation was that if the tooth was simply discarded with other rubbish, a dog or pig might gnaw it, in which case the child's new tooth would be misshapen, like the animal's. Throughout the 20th century, an alternative way of treating a milk tooth has become ever more popular: to hide it overnight under the child's pillow, so that fairies, or the Tooth Fairy, will take it away and leave a coin instead. This playful gift-giving is pleasanter for all concerned.

An idea current to the end of the 19th century, but now obsolete, was that fallen or extracted teeth (whether of child or adult) must either be immediately burned, or eventually buried with their owner, ready for Doomsday; otherwise, one would have to hunt for them in a bucket of blood in Hell. In Derbyshire, people stored their teeth in jars, to be placed in their coffins eventually, since ‘when you go to heaven you will have to account for all the teeth you have had upon earth’ (Addy, 1895: 125). Occasionally, malevolent magic was feared; at Westleigh (Devon) in the 19th century, women kept all their extracted teeth carefully hidden ‘to prevent enemies or dogs getting hold of them’ (Elworthy, 1895: 437).

Bibliography
The full bibliography list is available here.

• Radford, Radford, and Hole, 1961: 336-9
• Opie and Tatem, 1989: 393-5
• Roud, 2003: 456-61

Small, bonelike structures of the jaws for the biting and mastication of food. Plural of tooth. See also dental, tooth.

• t. abscess — see alveolar1 abscess, malar abscess.
• accessional t. — the permanent molars, so called because they have no deciduous predecessors in the dental arch.
• anelodont t. — teeth with a limited period of growth.
• anterior t. — usually taken to include incisors and canines.
• t. attrition — see dental attrition.
• baby t. — see deciduous teeth (below).
• brachyodont t. — a type of dentition as seen in humans and pigs; the teeth have short crowns, well developed roots and a narrow root canal. See also hypsodont, bunodont.
• bunodont t. — see bunodont.
• canine t. — the long, pointed tooth in the interdental space between incisors and cheek teeth; there is one in each jaw on both sides.
• carnassial t. — see carnassial tooth.
• t. cavity — see dental cavity, pulp cavity.
• deciduous t. — the temporary set of teeth that erupt in the young and are shed before or near maturity. They have smaller crowns and root systems and are fewer in number than the permanent teeth that replace them. Called also milk teeth, temporary teeth, baby teeth. Occasionally, particularly in small breeds of dogs, shedding of the deciduous tooth may not occur when the permanent replacement has erupted, necessitating veterinary intervention.

  Retained deciduous canine tooth in a dog.

• diphyodont t. — see diphyodont.
• displaced molar t. — see inherited displacement of molar teeth.
• ectopic t. — see dental cyst.
• embedded t. — unerupted.
• congenital t. enamel deficiency — see inherited enamel defect.
• t. eruption time
• t. excessive wear — occurs in animals on high fluorine intake or on diets low in calcium.
• geminous t. — see gemination.
• t. grinding — 1. grinding of the incisors to improve foraging ability. Has been done to sheep with an industrial angle grinder with indifferent results.
— 2. see bruxism.
• heterodont t. — see heterodont.
• homodont t. — see homodont.
• hypsodont t. — a form of dentition, seen in horses and many ruminants; the crown is high (deep), the root is short.
• impacted t. — one so placed in the jaw that it is unable to erupt or to attain its normal position in occlusion.
• incisor t. — the front teeth used for cropping grass or rending flesh. From two to four in each quadrant, depending on the species, except that they are missing in the upper jaw of ruminants.
• inherited molar t. displacement — see inherited displacement of molar teeth.
• lophodont t. — cheek teeth with ridged occlusal surfaces. See also lophodont.
• t. maleruption — defective eruption; includes delayed eruption and more usually eruption out of its normal position.
• milk t. — see deciduous teeth (above).
• molar t. — the permanent, primary cheek teeth that are not preceded by premolars. They are typically big teeth used for grinding and with ridges on their occlusal surfaces (lophodont) in horses, worn rounded cusps (bunodont) in pigs, or including crescents (selenodont) in cattle, and either cutting edges or flattened areas in carnivores.
• monophyodont t. — see monophyodont.
• needle t. — any small sharp teeth in piglets but principally the canine teeth.
• permanent t. — see permanent dentition.
• t. pigmentation — see tetracycline stain.
• pink t. — caused by staining with porphyrin, or by deficiency of dentine and enamel, a congenital defect.
• premature t. loss — a problem in New Zealand sheep. Characterized by acute then chronic gingivitis, then periodontitis and loss of teeth. Cause unknown.
• premolar t. — cheek teeth present in both generations, found between the molars and canines. The first premolar is exceptional in humans because it erupts late and is never replaced. In domestic species, there are up to three or four deciduous, followed by up to four permanent premolars in both jaws and on both sides.
• t. rasp — see tooth rasp.
• retained t. — deciduous premolars or incisors may be retained even though the permanent teeth have erupted. The deciduous crowns are likely to protrude at odd angles and cause difficult mastication.
• secodont t. — see secodont.
• sectorial t. — a cutting tooth. See carnassial tooth.
• selenodont t. — teeth with crescents in their grinding surfaces, as in the cheek teeth of ruminants.
• sharp t. — the edges of molar teeth in the horse which require frequent rasping because of the injury that they might cause to the oral mucosa.
• stained t. — red-brown in inherited porphyrinuria in cattle, frequent dosing with tetracyclines, heavy staining with brown tartar in ruminants with a rumination and prehension problem, usually due to loss of anterior part of tongue.
• supernumerary t. — teeth in excess of the normal complement, e.g. double row of incisors. Called also polyodontia, heterotopic polydontia.
• temporary t. — see deciduous teeth (above).
• wolf t. — see wolf tooth.

IN BRIEF: The hard, bony objects that are usually rooted in rows on the jaws of vertebrates and used for biting and chewing.

Winter either bites with its teeth or lashes with its tail. — Unknown

Dansk (Danish)
n. - tænder

idioms:

• armed to the teeth    væbnet til tænderne
• get one's teeth into    bide sig fast i
• in the teeth of    i strid med
• set a person's teeth on edge    gå på nerverne, irritere

Nederlands (Dutch)
gebit

Français (French)
n. - dents

idioms:

• armed to the teeth    armé jusqu'aux dents
• get one's teeth into    se mettre à fond dans, se mettre à faire qch pour de bon
• in the teeth of    contre, en dépit de
• in the teeth of the wind    contre le vent
• set one's teeth on edge    s'attaquer à (un problème)

Deutsch (German)
n. - Zähne, Gebiß

idioms:

• get one's teeth into    sich festbeißen an, in Angriff nehmen
• in the teeth of    entgegen, zum Trotz, trotz
• in the teeth of the wind    (nau) gegen den Wind segeln
• set one's teeth on edge    jdn. zu einem unangenehmen Gefühl veranlassen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. pl. - δόντια

idioms:

• armed to the teeth    οπλισμένος μέχρι τα δόντια, οπλισμένος σαν αστακός
• cut one's teeth    βγάζω δόντια, αποκτώ πρώτες εμπειρίες
• get one's teeth into    ρίχνομαι αποφασιστικά σε
• in the teeth of    σε πείσμα
• pick one's teeth    σκαλίζω τα δόντια μου
• set a person's teeth on edge    δημιουργώ δυσάρεστη αίσθηση σε κάποιον

Italiano (Italian)
denti

idioms:

• armed to the teeth    armato fino ai denti
• get one's teeth into    dedicarsi a
• in the teeth of    nonostante
• set a person's teeth on edge    innervosire qualcuno

Português (Portuguese)
n. pl. - dentes (m pl)

idioms:

• armed to the teeth    armado até os dentes
• get one's teeth into    conseguir um pouco da ação
• in the teeth of    nas garras de
• set a person's teeth on edge    achar algo ou alguém extremamente desagradável ou irritante (fig.)

Русский (Russian)
зубы, зубцы, зубчики, зубки

idioms:

• armed to the teeth    вооружен до зубов
• get one's teeth into    заняться чем-л.
• in the teeth of    делать что-л. несмотря на (опасносность/ трудность)
• set a person's teeth on edge    бросать в дрожь, мурашки по коже забегали

Español (Spanish)
n. - dientes, dentadura

idioms:

• get one's teeth into    hincarle el diente a
• in the teeth of    en pleno, a pesar de
• in the teeth of the wind    contra un viento violento
• set one's teeth on edge    inducir una sensación desagradable, irritar

Svenska (Swedish)
n. pl. - tänder

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
牙齿

idioms:

• armed to the teeth    武装到牙齿, 拥有很多的武器
• get one's teeth into    专注于..., 开始认真处理, 紧紧抓住
• in the teeth of    对抗, 不顾
• set a person's teeth on edge    使某人感到不舒服

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 牙齒

idioms:

• armed to the teeth    武裝到牙齒, 擁有很多的武器
• get one's teeth into    專注於..., 開始認真處理, 緊緊抓住
• in the teeth of    對抗, 不顧
• set a person's teeth on edge    使某人感到不舒服

한국어 (Korean)
n. - tooth (이)의 복수

idioms:

• get one's teeth into    ~에 열중하다
• in the teeth of    맞대 놓고, 꺼리지 않고, 눈에 띄게

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 歯, 歯を付ける, かむ

idioms:

• get one's teeth into    …にかみつく, 没頭する
• in the teeth of    反対して
• set a person's teeth on edge    いらいらさせる

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الجمع) تنبت أسنانه أو سنه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮שיניים‬

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Teeth Whitening	gold teeth
Whiter Teeth	teeth cleaning