Word.ws English Dictionary

sweet tooth

sweet tooth noun: a liking for foods that are sweet; a weakness for sweets.

Noun

sweet tooth (plural sweet tooths)

  1. (idiomatic, singular) A liking for foods that are sweet; a weakness for sweets.
    • He eats a healthy diet most of the time, but has a sweet tooth when it comes to candy.
  2. (countable, idiomatic) Someone with a liking for sweet foods.
  3. An edible fungus of species Hydnum repandum.
  4. A preference, especially for a kind of food.
    • the python has a sweet tooth for rats and mice and the sweet tooth of this particular snake is on edge for a square meal.1913, Jewett Castello Gilson, Wealth of the World's Waste Places, and Oceania, page 298
    • Prowlers are on the loose in suburban Denver. Description: pointy ears, bushy tails and a sweet tooth for poodle and cat.2007 May 30, Joey Bunch, “Suburban pet peeve: coyotes”, in The Denver Post

Examples of sweet tooth in a sentence

  • But my grandmother had, in my father's words, a "sweet tooth” for meat.2010, Tony Ardizzone, The Whale Chaser: A Novel, page 101:
  • In the same way I developed a craving for doughnuts, my sweet tooth for God's Word developed by repetition.2013, Kim Newlen, The One Year Sweet and Simple Moments with God Devotional, page 169:
  • She had a sweet tooth for booze." "Did she have a sweet tooth for drugs?"2014, John Maley, A Little Murder in Tucson, page 50:
  • I have high hopes though, because mother always did have a sweet tooth for rather nice men, you see father was tremendously attractive.2022, Anthony M. Ludovici, Too Old for Dolls: A Novel:

Forms of sweet tooth

pluralsweet tooths

Words formed from sweet tooth

Questions about sweet tooth

What does sweet tooth mean?
Sweet tooth means a liking for foods that are sweet; a weakness for sweets.
How do you use sweet tooth in a sentence?
But my grandmother had, in my father's words, a "sweet tooth” for meat.
What part of speech is sweet tooth?
Sweet tooth is a noun.
What is the plural of sweet tooth?
The plural of sweet tooth is sweet tooths.

Words near sweet tooth in the dictionary

  1. sweet thing
  2. sweet thirteen
  3. sweet thirteens
  4. sweet thorn
  5. sweet thorns
  6. sweet tooth
  7. sweet tooths
  8. sweet upon
  9. sweet vernal grass
  10. sweet water
  11. sweet waters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sweet tooth (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-sweet tooth.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sweet tooth.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sweet_tooth. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.