Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An aching pain in or near a tooth.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Pain in the teeth; odontalgia. Toothache was once supposed to be caused by a worm in the tooth. Compare worm.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Med.) Pain in a tooth or in the teeth; odontalgia.
  • noun (Bot.) a kind of grass (Ctenium Americanum) having a very pungent taste.
  • noun (Bot.) A shrub of the genus Aralia (Aralia spinosa).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A pain or ache in a tooth.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an ache localized in or around a tooth

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

tooth +‎ ache.

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Examples

  • He was so fearful of losing his new-found facility that he practiced for the rest of that day, and lay down at night with what he called the toothache in every muscle.

    Dick in the Everglades A. W. Dimock

  • Dexter had just left off at the end of a line, and finished the first letters of the word toothache, leaving "toot" as his division, and taking a fresh dip of ink ready for writing "hache."

    Quicksilver The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel George Manville Fenn 1870

  • "In this case, the toothache is a total loss of privacy."

    Facebook Privacy Settings As Explained By Casey Neistat (VIDEO) 2010

  • "In this case, the toothache is a total loss of privacy."

    Facebook Privacy Settings As Explained By Casey Neistat (VIDEO) 2010

  • I recall a toothache that once aggravated me enough to consider pliers tempting, but there's no indication that Balderston was suffering from serious pain or acute symptoms.

    Lise Waring: Don't Try This at Home: A Self-Appendectomy in Telluride 2010

  • She also told expectant mothers that a toothache is a frequent sign of pregnancy, and that they should expect to loose one tooth for every child they bring into the world.

    Archive 2006-11-01 Mother Jones RN 2006

  • She also told expectant mothers that a toothache is a frequent sign of pregnancy, and that they should expect to loose one tooth for every child they bring into the world.

    The Perfect Woman's Guide to Pregnancy Mother Jones RN 2006

  • When we have gone to sleep with a maddening toothache and are conscious of it only as a little girl whom we attempt, time after time, to pull out of the water, or as a line of Molière which we repeat incessantly to ourselves, it is a great relief to wake up, so that our intelligence can disentangle the idea of toothache from any artificial semblance of heroism or rhythmic cadence.

    Swann's Way 2003

  • Weariness is the best friend of labor, just as the toothache is the best friend of sound teeth.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 Various

  • (The toothache was the only malady to which Tom had ever been subject.) "Euclid, my lad; why, what's that?" said Mr. Tulliver.

    The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book Ontario. Ministry of Education

Comments

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  • Daffynition: a pain that drives you to extraction.

    January 6, 2007