Episode summary
A second lost tooth, a teething baby, and the messy start of learning anything new. Tayvin on two tooth idioms that bookend a journey: where you begin, and what you commit to for the long haul.
T.E.A. Time is hosted by English teacher Tayvin Bayless. Read the full transcript.
Hello, hello, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless. To anyone joining me for the very first time, I’m so glad you’re here, and I hope you’ll stick around. And to my returning listeners, it’s wonderful to have you back with me again.
Here’s a question to start us off. Do you remember the first time you tried to do something that you’re actually good at now? Not the polished version of you that exists today, but the very first, clumsy, awkward attempt. What was it like?
I’ve been thinking about beginnings lately, the messy, fumbling start of learning anything new. And funnily enough, it all comes back to something in my mouth. Or rather, something missing from it. Last episode, I told you about the time I knocked out my two front teeth in a bike accident as a kid. Luckily, I was young enough that I only lost my baby teeth. My permanent adult teeth later grew in, and I had a nice gapless smile once again. Until I didn’t.
When I was fifteen years old, I was out late playing in our neighborhood park with a group of friends. It was late, and so visibility was low. At this park there’s an unusual contraption that the kids like to play on. It has a crossbar that you stand on, and two curved poles that come together at the top and bottom to form a kind of vertical eye shape. The way this thing is set up, a kid can stand on the crossbar, grab onto the two poles, and spin like a top. It’s rather fun, and I had used it many times before. On this night, we were all running around the park playing some game like tag, though I don’t remember many of the details. I ended up running too close to someone who was spinning around rather fast on the top simulator, and slammed my face into one of the metal poles as it came around. That night also ended in blood, crying, and a lost tooth.
I now have a dental implant. The dentist put a metal post into my gums and fit a realistic-looking crown over it. If you see me smiling, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell, but one of my teeth is an impostor.
In the story I just shared, I broke and eventually lost one of my teeth. The phrase that we will be looking at today uses similar verbiage, but with a completely different meaning.
That phrase is “cut your teeth on.” Cut your teeth on something.
Now, unlike the story I just told, this tooth phrase is actually about beginnings, not endings. The phrase used to be a little longer than it is today. People used to say “cut your eyeteeth.” Your eyeteeth are the pointed teeth near the front, the canines on the top, and they’re called eyeteeth because the nerves run up close to the eyes. Those particular teeth are some of the last baby teeth to come in, so if a child had cut their eyeteeth, it meant they were no longer a tiny baby. They’d been around a little while. Over time, people dropped the “eye,” and by the 1860s we were left with the phrase we use today.
To cut your teeth on something means to get your very first experience of it, to learn it right at the beginning, back when you’re new and a little clumsy and still figuring everything out. There’s one more thing worth knowing about how we actually use this phrase, at least in its figurative sense. It almost always looks backward. You don’t usually say you’re cutting your teeth on something at this very moment. Instead, you reach for it to describe how you got your start at something you’ve since become good at. A pianist might say she cut her teeth on simple children’s songs. A journalist might say he cut his teeth at a small local newspaper. In both cases, they’re looking back at their clumsy beginnings from a place of real skill.
And right now, I’m watching this phrase play out in my home in the most literal way possible.
At the end of last week, we noticed that Eliana is cutting her top teeth. She cut her bottom two teeth a few months ago, and we’ve been on the lookout for those top teeth ever since. Right now, she just has a tiny little nub, or small part, of one of her top teeth poking through the gums. The time when a baby is cutting teeth is referred to as teething.
For the last little bit, Eliana has been drooling a lot. That’s one of the symptoms of teething, so it is only to be expected. She also wants to chew on everything, which means that everything gets covered in her spit. It’s kinda gross, but also unavoidable. It’s just part of this stage of development.
Funnily enough, Eliana cutting her first teeth reminds me a bit of my early experiences teaching English as a second language in Japan.
As a teacher, I cut my teeth on in-person group classes, teaching from a textbook. The classes ranged from five people to fifty people, depending on the week and what city I was living in at the time. They were free classes, open to anyone in the community, and had a very clear structure to follow. Even with that very clear outline to every lesson, I still made a lot of mistakes.
I’m a native speaker, so I have been using English all my life. But speaking English and teaching English are two very different things. As a teacher, I was in completely uncharted waters, and well outside my comfort zone. I needed to learn how to explain grammar in ways that non-native speakers could understand, speak at a level that matches my students English ability, and answer questions accurately and engagingly. Just like Eliana, as I was cutting my teeth on teaching, I kinda made a mess of everything. I used overly complicated explanations. I sometimes focused too much on the exceptions to grammatical rules, and at other times I didn’t acknowledge the exceptions at all. Sometimes, I just got things wrong. That’s what it means to be new to something. Cutting teeth is a messy process.
My classes today look dramatically different than they did when I was first getting started. I no longer teach from a textbook, I don’t focus on explaining grammar principles in class, and I typically focus on private or small-group classes. I still make mistakes, as there is still a lot for me to learn about English, the science of language learning, and how to communicate cross-culturally, but I’m confident that I’m miles ahead of where I was when I started.
Let’s take a closer look at a second tooth phrase, one that pairs perfectly with the first: sink your teeth into. Sink your teeth into something.
To sink your teeth into something means to throw yourself into it fully, with real energy and focus. Not to dip a toe in, but to really commit. The image is exactly what it sounds like: biting down firmly into something, the way you would with a big, delicious slice of pizza. When you sink your teeth into a meal, you’re all in.
And here’s what I love about putting these two phrases side by side. Think about what a baby actually does while cutting their teeth. They chew. On everything. On toys, on books, on their own hands, on my shoulder if I hold them too close. And all that biting and chewing actually helps the new teeth push through the gums. So in a funny way, cutting your teeth and sinking your teeth in are connected. The chewing is part of how the teeth come in.
First you cut your teeth on something. You get that early, messy start. And then, if you want to get really good, you have to find something you can sink your teeth into, something worth chewing on for a long, long time.
That’s exactly how it went for me with teaching. I cut my teeth on those free classes in Japan. But the reason I kept going, the reason I’ve spent years slowly getting better, is that language learning turned out to be something I could truly sink my teeth into.
You see it everywhere. Someone might cut their teeth on a few simple recipes when they’re learning to cook. But the ones who become truly great cooks are the ones who find a style of food they can really sink their teeth into and explore for years.
So here’s something to keep an ear out for. The next time you meet these two phrases, notice the difference. Cutting your teeth is about the beginning. Sinking your teeth in is about the deep dive. And maybe ask yourself: what’s something you cut your teeth on a long time ago, that you’d love to sink your teeth into now?
I love discovering the surprising history of a word, reading new research about how language learning actually works in our brains, and watching how English shifts from one generation to the next. There’s so much here for me to sink my teeth into. But in a sense, even after all these years, I’m still cutting my teeth too. I learn something new almost every week.
I think that’s the quiet lesson tucked inside these two little phrases. Eliana is cutting her first teeth this week, drooling and chewing and making a mess of everything, exactly the way I did when I started teaching. One day she’ll find something she can sink her teeth into and spend a lifetime getting good at. That’s the whole journey, really: from your first clumsy attempt to the thing you can’t put down. So whether you’re just cutting your teeth on English, or you’re ready to really sink your teeth in, I’d love to walk a small part of that road with you.
And with that, my cup is empty. Thanks for joining me for T.E.A. Time. Until the next pot.
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72 expressions from both seasons, with the story behind each one.