milk tooth

noun

: a temporary tooth of a young mammal that in human dentition includes four incisors, two canines, and four molars in each jaw : baby tooth, deciduous tooth

Whereas most mammals retain their milk teeth for months, some bat species lose these teeth soon after birth and have adult dentition even before they are weaned.

—Rick A. Adams and Scott C. Pedersen

… a restless, rambunctious boy, who at the beginning of the year had lost two front milk teeth that still showed no signs of being replaced by adult ones.

—Edwidge Danticat

Examples of milk tooth in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

One set appeared to be baby teeth, also called milk teeth, while the others were adult teeth. —Katie Cottingham, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Aug. 2024

As Ana Cristina Herreros explains, long ago in Spain children flung their milk teeth up onto the roofs of their houses so that a Tooth Mouse might collect them. —Meghan Cox Gurdon, wsj.com, 7 Apr. 2023

Your kid’s milk teeth: the cost of playing the tooth fairy (ten dollars for the first tooth, five dollars for teeth two to four and molars, two dollars for the rest). —Francesca Carington, The New Yorker, 20 Feb. 2023

Finlayson said the team had also found the milk tooth of a Neanderthal around 4 years old, and hypothesized that they could have been dragged into the cave by a hyaena. —Jeevan Ravindran, CNN, 30 Sep. 2021

Relatives came in and out, helping with the children and watching as Youssef grew milk teeth and Samer went to school and adjusted to life in a strange country. —Greg Betza, Washington Post, 1 May 2018

Word History

First Known Use

1738, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

milk tooth

noun

: one of the first temporary teeth of a young mammal that in human beings number 20

called also baby tooth, deciduous tooth

Medical Definition

milk tooth

noun

: a temporary tooth of a young mammal

especially : one of the human dentition including four incisors, two canines, and four molars in each jaw which fall out during childhood and are replaced by the permanent teeth

called also baby tooth, deciduous tooth, primary tooth