Word.ws English Dictionary

sink one's teeth into

sink one's teeth into verb: to bite; to bite into.

Verb

sink one's teeth into (third-person singular simple present sinks one's teeth into, present participle sinking one's teeth into, simple past sank one's teeth into, past participle sunk one's teeth into)

  1. To bite; to bite into.
    • She yanked her head over her shoulder and, taking her cue from the rat in the laboratory, she sank her teeth into Burt’s arm as hard as she could.2012, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Ratburger, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN
  2. (broadly, colloquial, figuratively) To become enthusiastically involved in.
    • He can't wait to sink his teeth into the new project.
    • He seemed happy living life in cruise control, which pissed me off. “Don't you want to really sink your teeth into something?” I asked.2012, Gavin McInnes, The Death of Cool: From Teenage Rebellion to the Hangover of Adulthood, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 88

Forms of sink one's teeth into

third-person singular presentsinks one's teeth into
present participlesinking one's teeth into
pastsank one's teeth into
past participlesunk one's teeth into
alternative formsink one's teeth in

Questions about sink one's teeth into

What does sink one's teeth into mean?
Sink one's teeth into means to bite; to bite into.
What part of speech is sink one's teeth into?
Sink one's teeth into is a verb.
What is the past tense of sink one's teeth into?
The past tense of sink one's teeth into is sank one's teeth into.

Words near sink one's teeth into in the dictionary

  1. sink holes
  2. sink in
  3. sink like a stone
  4. sink of iniquity
  5. sink one's teeth in
  6. sink one's teeth into
  7. sink or swim
  8. sink tidies
  9. sink tidy
  10. sink trap
  11. sink traps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sink one's teeth into (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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