Susan from Virginia Beach, Virginia, shares the phrase her mother used when the kids refused to eat: It’ll grow hair on your back teeth. This supposed motivator likely blends two older traditions: a German idiom, Haare auf den Zähnen haben, literally “to have hair on one’s teeth,” but used to mean “to be assertive or sharp-tongued,” an expression used by the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe long ago, and the more recent English expression about strong food or drink putting “hair on your chest.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Hair On Your Back Teeth”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Susan Rogge from Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Hey, Susan, we’re glad to have you.
What’s on your mind today?
Well, I listened to a previous episode
Where you talked about food language quirks,
And I immediately thought of something my mother
Always told my sisters and I.
If we were eating, well, resisting eating something
That we didn’t like, she would say that we should eat it
Because it would grow hair on our back teeth.
We thought that sounded disgusting,
And it was no inducement at all for us to eat that.
I guess not.
She said that her granny told us, told her as she was growing up,
The same thing, and she thought it would be just very exciting
To grow hair on her back teeth, and it made her want to eat it.
But we’re not sure, you know, it made us question our mother, for one thing.
But also, you know, it was just an odd expression, which I have never heard anybody else say or, you know.
I really don’t talk about it a lot.
It’s a little embarrassing.
So Susan, it’s like, eat your vegetables, you’ll grow hair on your back teeth, as if that’s a good thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I heard about, you know, like doing things that put hair on your chest, but I thought that was more like alcohol related.
Yeah, yeah, that’s right.
So there’s a couple different ways into this, but let me ask, do you have recent-ish Germanic heritage in your family?
Somebody from one of the German-speaking countries?
I would say so, that it was on the side of the family where there were roots to Germany.
Okay, because there’s an expression in German, which is to have hair on your teeth, not necessarily back teeth.
It’s a Haurer auf den Seen in Haven.
And it’s fairly common and still currently used.
And it’s quite old, actually, a couple hundred years old.
The German poet and novelist Goethe is quoted as using it when he talks about Berliners being a daring, hard-edged sort of people who can be delicate but must have hair on their teeth or, you know, be coarse in their manner in order to stay above the mess and the crowd.
But so, yeah, it’s a couple hundred years.
But this is not quite the same expression because to have hair on your teeth in German is really about being assertive or courageous or speaking furiously or with a great deal of wit or sometimes speaking in such a way that you never agree with anyone else, being very argumentative.
So there’s a lot of different nuances here.
And it’s popped up in other European languages like Danish as well.
But I think you were on another track that I think is important here.
Earlier, when you mentioned people say drinking strong alcohol puts hair on your chest.
And what I think we’ve got in your great-grandmother or your mother is a combination of these two.
I think they’ve come together in one person.
So it’s a little bit of one, a little bit of that, a little bit of a menu A, a little bit of a menu B.
Because this expression to put hair on one’s chest, usually said about eating strong food or drinking strong drink, isn’t as old as the German expression, only going back maybe 100 or so years.
But it’s about toughening up.
It’s by comparison to an adult.
You know, you go, one of the most visible signs of becoming an adult is being tall and strong, but also having hair in unusual places.
And so, yeah, so I think it’s both of these coming together saying you eat your vegetables and you’ll be tall and strong.
You know, you become an adult.
And having the jokey way of talking about the hair showing up in unusual places just adds a little icing on the saying, I think.
But the back teeth, I just.
Yeah, well, that’s I think the teeth part came from the German inspection.
I think it’s the German expression has collided with the American one and formed this new thing in your family.
Well, Susan, I’m glad your husband never saw any evidence of this.
No, no, no. He says no. And so it is not a common thing, I guess. But well, I will let my sisters
Know because they will be interested to know, you know, where this all came from.
But Susan, thank you so much for sharing with us. We appreciate it.
Thank you so much for giving me your time and the information.
Yeah. Thanks for calling, Susan.
Bye-bye.
You’re welcome. Bye.
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