2773: Wisdom Teeth: Across Languages Jul 24, 2024

When it comes to our third molars, the term "wisdom teeth" might sound a bit funny in English, but it is an example of a larger phenomenon in linguistics of connecting the tooth to wisdom.

In English, we call them "wisdom teeth" because they usually appear between the ages of 17 and 25, when one becomes an adult, and while one’s late teens and early twenties are not thought of as years of wisdom now per se, it would seem they are in this case. Compare

Latin: dentes sapientiae literally "teeth of wisdom."

French: Dents de sagesse with ‘sagesse’ meaning ‘wisdom’.

Spanish: Muelas del juicio for "teeth of judgment," again linking these molars to discernment 

German: Weisheitszähne also "wisdom teeth."

Hebrew: שיני בינה (shenei bina) “teeth of wisdom”

Chinese (Mandarin): 智齿 (zhìchǐ), with 智 meaning wisdom.

All that said, there are some exceptions. Even there, it usually denotes one’s age, or other signs of arriving at adulthood. 

Japanese: 親知らず (oyashirazu) translates to "unknown to the parents," implying that these teeth appear after one has grown up and possibly left the parental home, an indirect nod to maturity but not specifically to wisdom.

Korean: 사랑니 (sarangni) translates to "love teeth," possibly referring to the age at which people start experiencing romantic love, again a marker of coming-of-age but not wisdom per se.

Turkish: The term "20 yaş dişi" translates to "20-year-old tooth," which simply refers to the typical age of emergence without any connotation of wisdom.

The reasons behind these linguistic differences can be attributed to cultural perspectives on aging and maturity. In many Western and Asian cultures, the age at which wisdom teeth appear is seen as a time of gaining knowledge, but rather than going in the direction more like Turkish did and calling them something like “adult teeth” or “matured teeth”, many languages have given a somewhat euphemistic title.