Gramer Girl here. I'm Minion Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today,

we'll talk about where Wisdom teeth get their name. And since it's graduation season,

we'll talk about when to capitalize the names of your degrees. Let's get started.

According to Grey's Anatomy, the medical book spelled GR-A-Y, not the television show,

spelled GR-E-Y, the third molars are called wisdom teeth because of how old people are

when those teeth usually appear. For many people, their wisdom teeth show up on dental

x-rays or start breaking through the gums in their late teens or early 20s. The emergence

of those teeth at such a late age is the basis for the idiom cut your wisdom teeth that

was commonly used in the 1800s to refer to having reached the age of discretion or wisdom.

Ebenezer Cobham Brewer first published his dictionary of phrase and fable in London

in 1870 in which the explanation for the idiom cut your wisdom teeth was as follows.

Quote, wisdom teeth are those at the extreme end of the jaws which do not make their

appearance till persons have come to years of discretion. When persons say or do silly

things, the remark is made of them that they have not yet cut their wisdom teeth or reached

the years of discretion.

Brewer was an ordained minister and son of a schoolmaster who, after graduating from Trinity

Hall of Cambridge, taught at his father's school in Norwich, England. Brewer's teaching

extended beyond the classroom through his writing. He wrote many instructional and fact-filled

books, his first of which was a guide to the scientific knowledge of things familiar

published around 1840. Some of the other books he wrote were errors of speech and of spelling,

rules for English spelling, and the historic notebook.

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