Hello--Do you have information on the origin of the term Sweet Tooth? My wife is doing a paper on, of all things, Wendy's former mascot the Ranch Tooth and we were having a hard time finding a background to the term sweet tooth.
Thanks,
Rick and Ginny Martin
Hi, Rick and Ginny -- The idea with "sweet tooth" is simply that "tooth" sometimes has a figurative meaning, in the sense of "appetite" or "taste." For example, the Oxford English Dictionary has a citation from 1851 that goes: "What a tooth for fruit has a monkey!"
("Ranch Tooth"? Do tell!)
Hello Martha--Thanks for the help and wanted to let you know your show is so much fun--"Ranch Tooth" was a character created for a Wendy's ad campaign, something about a ranch chicken sandwich. They were perhaps hoping he would be the next Ronald McDonald but people found him more annoying than anything else. You should check him out on You Tube. He is just annoying enough to pass for amusing. The wife has to write a paper on an advertisement and those have always been our favorites.
Thanks again for you help,
R + G
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNsqVNqIGj4