Etymologies
- Possibly from the practice of examining the length of horses’ teeth when estimating their ages: an old horse has long, rectangular incisors, and their occlusion angle is steep. Compare don't look a gift horse in the mouth. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“When the blood was on the moon shortly after Okra's fourteenth birthday-there was no party, because she was getting entirely too long in the tooth for marriage, as if her faults weren't already bad enough-the third big uply event in Okra's life occurred.”
“Buzz walked to a U-Drive and rented an old Ford sedan, thinking it looked pretty long in the tooth for a getaway car.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘long in the tooth’.
-
Public List: Body Metaphors
Phrases that use body parts metaphorically.
neck of the woods, bone of contention, mouth of a river, teeth of the storm, heart of the matter, foot of the bed, eye of the storm, dogleg hole, finger lakes, headwaters, foothills, knik arm and 212 more...
-
♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
-
Preliminary #1
Just trying to make things more manageable for the moment
life of riley, tongue in cheek, long in the tooth, dumb luck, bone up, pony express, deal breaker, whoopsy daisy, scarce as hen's t..., pony up, thick as thieves, dumb bunny and 78 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for long in the tooth.
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.