Word.ws English Dictionary

cutting one's teeth

cutting one's teeth is the present participle and gerund of cut one's teeth.

Meaning of cut one's teeth

Verb

cut one's teeth (third-person singular simple present cuts one's teeth, present participle cutting one's teeth, simple past and past participle cut one's teeth)

  1. (idiomatic) To begin; to gain early experience.
    • He cut his teeth on flying model airplanes as a child, so aeronautical engineering came naturally.

Questions about cutting one's teeth

What is cutting one's teeth the present participle and gerund of?
Cutting one's teeth is the present participle and gerund of cut one's teeth.

Words near cutting one's teeth in the dictionary

  1. cutting one's eyeteeth
  2. cutting one's losses
  3. cutting one's lucky
  4. cutting one's own throat
  5. cutting one's stick
  6. cutting one's teeth
  7. cutting out
  8. cutting out the middleman
  9. cutting red tape
  10. cutting room
  11. cutting rooms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cutting one's teeth (page history and authors); cut one's teeth (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cutting one's teeth.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cutting_one%27s_teeth. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.