cut one’s teeth
idiom

- to gain one's first experience of a particular activity or field; to learn the basics of something at an early stage in one's career.

- to get your first experience of a particular type of work or activity, especially at the beginning of your career.

- to do something new which gives you experience and helps you learn how to do more difficult things later.

Oxford Languages, Cambridge Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary

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PHRASE ORIGIN

The idiom reaches back to one of the most basic human experiences: the pain and disruption of a baby's first teeth breaking through the gums. In English, this has been called cutting teeth since at least 1677, when the Oxford English Dictionary records the usage. The logic is bodily: the tooth doesn't just appear — it forces its way through soft tissue. Something is endured. Something new emerges.

For centuries the phrase remained literal. Then it extended naturally to human development. By the mid-18th century, English writers were using cut one's eyeteeth to mean gaining worldly wisdom — the eyeteeth (upper canines, positioned just below the eyes) being the last and most painful of the baby teeth to emerge. To have cut them was to have survived something.

By 1860, Charles Reade's novel The Cloister and the Hearth used the shortened form without eye: "He and I were born the same year, but he cut his teeth long before me." The shift from physical to professional was gradual and entirely logical. Both involve something new breaking through into the world, at some cost. Both imply that the difficult early phase is behind you.

In German-speaking countries the closest parallel is die ersten Sporen verdienen — earning your spurs — though that image is military where cut one's teeth is bodily. German also uses von der Pike auf dienen (to serve from the pike upwards), a phrase rooted in the infantry tradition of starting at the very bottom. Both cultures reach for vivid physical metaphor when describing how someone earns the right to be taken seriously.

Helga & Paul Smith

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MORE TOOTHY TERMS

- Sink one’s teeth into something = to start to do something with lots of energy and enthusiasm

- By the skin of one’s teeth = to barely succeed at something

- Grind (or gnash) one’s teeth = to complain angrily about something

- Grit one’s teeth = to accept a difficult situation and deal with it in a determined way

- Lie through one’s teeth = to lie about something that you know is completely false

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SYNONYMS

apprentice oneself, be a beginner, be wet behind the ears, become seasoned in, begin at the bottom, break in, build early experience, come up the hard way, CUT ONE’S TEETH, develop one's skills, do one's apprenticeship (groundwork), earn one's keep (spurs, stripes), enter the school of hard knocks, feel one's way, find one's feet (footing, sea legs), gain a foothold (experience), get a foot in the door, get a grounding in, get one's feet wet, get one's first break, get one's hands dirty, get the feel of, get to grips with, go through one's paces, go through the mill (the motions, the ranks), go to school on, graduate from the university of life, grind away at, grow into the role, have a trial run, hit the ground running, join the bottom rung, keep one's nose to the grindstone, learn at the knee of, learn by doing, learn one's way around, learn the hard way (the ropes, the trade from scratch, to walk before you run), make a start, master the basics, pay one's dues, pick up the basics (the tricks of the trade), practise one's craft, put in the hours (the miles, the time), rise through the ranks, rough it out, serve an apprenticeship, serve one's time (in the trenches), sharpen one's skills, start at the bottom (from scratch, on the shop floor, one's career), start out, sweat it out, take baby steps (one's first steps), train in, wet one's feet, work from the ground up (one's way up, up through the ranks)

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PRACTICE OWAD in an English conversation, discuss something like:

“I wonder how many people CUT THEIR TEETH working in the mailroom, before becoming CEO.”

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