Excerpted From: “The Tooth, the Whole Tooth, and Nothing but the Tooth”

by Richard Lederer, Ph.D. English teacher and expert in etymology

A number of dentists will tell you that getting me to sit still in a dentist’s chair is like pulling teeth. As a born coward, I am simply unable to transcend dental medication. Nonetheless, the oral metaphors in our language provide a topic that I can really sink my teeth into. You might think that expressions about the teeth would be as scarce as hen’s teeth (hens, of course, don’t have any teeth). But you don’t have to give your eyeteeth to come up with a lot of toothsome examples.

The eyeteeth are so called because they are located directly below the eyes in the upper jaw. They are also called canine teeth because they resemble the pointed teeth of dogs. As such, they are especially useful in holding and tearing food, and they are the most difficult and painful of teeth to extract. Thus, if you would give your eyeteeth for something, you are willing to go through a lot to relinquish something of great value.

Not surprisingly, teeth are also associated with matters culinary. We call some women toothsome, not because they possess prominent teeth, but because their appearance is pleasing to the palate of the eyes. In parts of the country, Italian sandwiches are called grinders because it takes a good set of teeth to eat them. Pasta should be cooked al dente, “to the tooth”-in other words, cooked just enough to retain a somewhat firm texture for the teeth. Spanish cookbooks call for using a diente from a cabeza of garlic-that is, a “tooth” from a “head” of garlic.

The space I’ve left at the start of each paragraph in this column is an indentation. When we indent a paragraph (from the Latin dens, “tooth,” by way of the French dent), we take a chunk, or small bite, out of the beginning. Indenture, from the same root, strictly means “a document with serrated edges,” referring to the once-common practice of cutting contracts into halves with jagged edges-one half for each party in agreement. By fitting the edges together, one could authenticate the document.

Still, it is considered bad manners to inspect the teeth of a horse that has been given to you and, by extension, to inquire too closely into the cost or value of any gift. Now you know the origin of don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, one of our oldest proverbs, whinnying back at least 1,500 years. If, on the other hoof, you decide to pay money to a horse trader, you are advised to determine whether it is a young stud or an old nag by examining the teeth and obtaining your information straight from the horse’s mouth, precisely where responsible word searchers should look.