Word.ws English Dictionary

fine-toothed

fine-toothed adjective: having small teeth placed closely together (of a comb, brush, etc.).

Adjective

fine-toothed (comparative more fine-toothed, superlative most fine-toothed)

  1. Having small teeth placed closely together (of a comb, brush, etc.).
  2. (figuratively) Of a search, study, analysis, etc., very exhaustive or thorough.
    • Of course Obama has a fine-toothed understanding of American racism but perhaps because of his unique parentage and history, he has cast himself as the conciliatory middle child, preferring to leave unsaid truths that might inflame, and insulating those said in various layers of cant.2020 November 12, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Barack Obama's 'A Promised Land'”, in The New York Times

Forms of fine-toothed

comparativemore fine-toothed
superlativemost fine-toothed

Origin of fine-toothed

From fine + toothed.

Words formed from fine-toothed

Phrases with fine-toothed

Questions about fine-toothed

What does fine-toothed mean?
Fine-toothed means having small teeth placed closely together (of a comb, brush, etc.).
What part of speech is fine-toothed?
Fine-toothed is an adjective.

Words near fine-toothed in the dictionary

  1. fine-tooth comb test
  2. fine-tooth comb tests
  3. fine-tooth combed
  4. fine-tooth combing
  5. fine-tooth combs
  6. fine-toothed
  7. fine-toothed comb
  8. fine-toothed combs
  9. fine-tune
  10. fine-tuned
  11. fine-tuned universe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fine-toothed (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: “fine-toothed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fine-toothed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.