salty tooth
- noun
:
antojo salado
- People with a salty tooth tend to choose chips over cookies.
Examples
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Late at night, his salty tooth makes him reach for a bag of pretzels.
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She always gives in to her salty tooth by eating popcorn at the movies.
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I have a salty tooth today!
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She always satisfies her salty tooth with chips.
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After a long day, she indulged her salty tooth by snacking on some crunchy nachos.
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Whenever he feels hungry, his salty tooth drives him to grab a handful of pretzels.
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At the party, her salty tooth led her to choose cheese crackers over sweet snacks.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
salty + tooth
The adjective 'salty' clearly signals a taste preference, but using 'tooth' to mean a craving (as in the idiom 'sweet tooth') is metaphorical and not compositional from the literal meanings. A B1 learner who knows both words but not the idiomatic pattern would likely not reliably infer 'a craving for salty foods,' so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Salty tooth comes from the idea of 'sweet tooth'. Imagine one tooth that prefers salty foods and always makes you reach for chips or pretzels. So the phrase means 'a craving for salty food'.