Word.ws English Dictionary

tooth-and-nail

tooth-and-nail adjective: vicious; violent; full of strength and power.

Adjective

tooth-and-nail (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) vicious; violent; full of strength and power
    • a tooth-and-nail fight
    • a tooth-and-nail battle

Adverb

tooth-and-nail (not comparable)

  1. viciously, violently
    • They fought tooth-and-nail

Examples of tooth-and-nail in a sentence

  • a tooth-and-nail scrap
  • a tooth-and-nail debate

Questions about tooth-and-nail

What does tooth-and-nail mean?
Tooth-and-nail means vicious; violent; full of strength and power.
How do you use tooth-and-nail in a sentence?
a tooth-and-nail scrap
What part of speech is tooth-and-nail?
Tooth-and-nail can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near tooth-and-nail in the dictionary

  1. tooth shell
  2. tooth shells
  3. tooth socket
  4. tooth sockets
  5. tooth, fang, and claw
  6. tooth-and-nail
  7. tooth-billed pigeon
  8. tooth-billed pigeons
  9. tooth-bottle
  10. tooth-bottles
  11. tooth-comb

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tooth-and-nail (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-tooth-and-nail.ogg.

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