🤍 Like a pearl 🦷 A tooth

pearly

1 8.6

A human tooth that is white and looks attractive

noun
/ˈpɜrli/

Informal

: diente

She was proud to show off her beautiful pearly teeth at the party.

Examples

And of course, make sure your pearly whites are looking clean, looking good, and as bright and white as possible because women definitely will notice your smile.
Lost my pearlies in the war.

Ed Wood (1994)
I lost my pearlies in the war.

Fiction book (1994)
He flashes his pearlies while his fingers do the walking through his girlfriend's pocketbooks.

Corridors of Blood (1963)
Let me see your pearly whites when you smile.
After visiting the dentist, his pearly teeth sparkled in the sunlight.

Synonyms

tooth

vspearly

∞ 1.0

A hard white part in the mouth used for biting and chewing

is informal and emphasizes whiteness or attractiveness rather than general function

chopper

vspearly

Slang

14 8.7

A tooth, often a large or false one

is informal and emphasizes whiteness or attractiveness rather than size or artificialness

Antonyms

stained

1 3.3

Treated with a colored liquid to change or protect the surface

discolored

1 3.5

A thing that has lost its color, often with stains

Compounds

pearly-white

2 4.0

A very light, shiny white color like a pearl

pearly everlasting

9.9

A plant that lives many years with soft silver leaves and long-lasting small white flowers

pearly nautilus

9.9

A sea animal like a squid that has a spiral shiny shell

pearly razorfish

9.9

A small sea fish with a long thin body and pearly colour that lives near sandy shores

pearly-shelled mussel

6.7

A shellfish with a shiny inner shell often used to make mother-of-pearl

Surface Forms

pearly singular

pearlies plural

Morphology

pearly = pearly (semi-transparent) = pearl + y

The noun is based on the adjective 'pearly', but the use as a count noun for a tooth is a lexicalized colloquial extension rather than a fully productive rule.

Etymology

Pearly as a noun comes from the jewel pearl, which is small, 'white' and 'shiny'. People call teeth 'pearlies' because they look like little pearls, so it means a human tooth, often a white or attractive one.