Uncommon Knowledge

Uncommon Knowledge: Is it wise to give your eye teeth for something?

June 26, 2013

If you’re going to give your eye teeth, it better be for something pretty darn valuable. The term eye tooth refers to the canine teeth in your upper jaw, called so because of their placement below the eyes. Giving up these teeth would not only be painful and impossible to disguise, but it might also suggest a loss of prestige or rank. In the 1700’s, “to cut your eye teeth” meant to have matured into adulthood. This is probably derived from the fact that the upper canine teeth on an actual canine are long and fang-like, and a dog would have the capacity to hunt or fight for itself once those teeth had grown in.

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Nathan is a copywriter and award-winning musical theater writer, whose work includes an adaptation of Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver. He has also been a classical violinist, tutored Kazakhstani jewelers in entrepreneurship, created large-scale games played across entire city blocks, served as a missionary in South Korea, conducted experiments in sonoluminescence, co-founded an exotic fruit-growing business, was a theater critic for Tucson Weekly, and as a teenager composed a women’s jazz quartet that is currently performed around the world.

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