sick to the back teeth
- idiom
- UK
:
estar harto
- After weeks of dealing with delays, I am sick to the back teeth of all this waiting.
Examples
-
I'm really sick to the back teeth of listening to the same excuses over and over again.
-
I am a bloke, and I am sick to the back teeth of seeing and reading men in every role of value.
Blog text (3) -
Some women might feel overlooked by men, or just be sick to the back teeth with hearing "you know I'm not intimidated by intelligent women."
Blog text (5) -
They're back to square one, unable to buy, devastated, sick to the back teeth with excuses and blame shifting.
-
She was sick to the back teeth of her coworkers complaining about trivial issues.
Synonyms
∞
6.3
Feeling very upset and disgusted because of worry or jealousy
522
5.8
Tired of something because you have had too much of it
117
5.3
Feeling very annoyed because you have had too much of something
Very ill or very fed up with something
Antonyms
How Annoyed
Surface Forms
Morphology
sick + to + the + back + teeth
The adjective 'sick' already conveys the core sense of being fed up, so a B1 learner who knows 'sick' could plausibly infer the general meaning. However, the phrase 'to the back teeth' functions as an idiomatic intensifier whose contribution is not transparently derived from 'back' + 'teeth', so the full expression is not completely predictable from its parts.
Etymology
The idiom sick to the back teeth may come from the picture of feeling so ill that the sickness seems to reach your back teeth, the teeth at the very back of your mouth. That's why it now means 'completely fed up' or 'having no more patience'.