wisdom tooth
17
3.2
- noun
- /ˈwɪzdəm tuːθ/
:
muela del juicio
- My dentist has been wanting to remove my wisdom teeth for years.
- wisdom teeth removed
- wisdom tooth extracted
- wisdom tooth surgery
I will get to the review now in a minute, but the past week I have had such incredible pain in this wisdom tooth right here.
- I will get to the review now in a minute, but the past week I have had such incredible pain in this wisdom tooth right here.
- And I had had a lot of friends who'd had their wisdom teeth taken out.
- This is why I still have my wisdom teeth, by the way.
- I had braces, extractions, wisdom teeth out, headgear, all that crap.
Examples
-
If the damage is already done, you may need to have your wisdom teeth removed.
Blog text (16) -
I had terribly infected (four times over) wisdom teeth that caused incredible pain for me.
Blog text (18) -
This is why I still have my wisdom teeth, by the way.
-
Oh, God, he just had his wisdom teeth taken out!
-
I only had to get the two top wisdom teeth out.
-
Her mouth is still a little sore from her wisdom teeth surgery, so she wanted to eat only soft food.
Blog text (10) -
I had my wisdom teeth pulled at age 18 because they were growing in sideways.
Blog text (12) -
I saw that once a gazillion years ago when I was recovering from wisdom tooth extraction.
Blog text (6) -
The sockets, the spaces where his wisdom teeth had been, still throbbed.
Fiction book (1995) -
I had to get my wisdom tooth removed because it was impacted.
Synonyms
26
2.5
A large flat tooth at the back of the mouth for grinding food
1
2.8
A large back tooth with a wide top that helps chew food
How Back
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is partly compositional: a B1 learner who knows 'wisdom' and 'tooth' can infer this denotes a tooth associated with maturity (i.e. appearing when one is older). However the specific conventional dental meaning (the third molar appearing in late adolescence/adulthood) is a culturally established label rather than a fully predictable semantic composition, so precise details may not be deducible without prior exposure.
Etymology
The noun wisdom tooth comes from the fact that these last teeth at the back of the mouth usually appear in the late teens or as a young adult, when people are older. That's why people called them wisdom teeth — because they appear when someone is thought to be 'wiser'.