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perfunctory
Definition: (adjective) unenthusiastic, routine, or mechanical.
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tooth
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tooth 		tooth  audio  (tth) KEY 

NOUN:
pl. teeth  (tth) KEY 
    1. One of a set of hard, bonelike structures rooted in sockets in the jaws of vertebrates, typically composed of a core of soft pulp surrounded by a layer of hard dentin that is coated with cementum or enamel at the crown and used for biting or chewing food or as a means of attack or defense.
    2. A similar structure in invertebrates, such as one of the pointed denticles or ridges on the exoskeleton of an arthropod or the shell of a mollusk.
  2. A projecting part resembling a tooth in shape or function, as on a comb, gear, or saw.
  3. A small, notched projection along a margin, especially of a leaf. Also called dent2.
  4. A rough surface, as of paper or metal.
    1. Something that injures or destroys with force. Often used in the plural: the teeth of the blizzard.
    2. teeth Effective means of enforcement; muscle: "This . . . puts real teeth into something where there has been only lip service" (Ellen Convisser).
  6. Taste or appetite: She always had a sweet tooth.
VERB:
toothed, tooth·ing, tooths (tth, t)
VERB:
tr.
  1. To furnish (a tool, for example) with teeth.
  2. To make a jagged edge on.
VERB:
intr.
To become interlocked; mesh.

IDIOMS:
get/sink (one's) teeth into Slang
To be actively involved in; get a firm grasp of.
show/bare (one's) teeth
To express a readiness to fight; threaten defiantly.
to the teeth
Lacking nothing; completely: armed to the teeth; dressed to the teeth.
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English, from Old English tth; see dent- in Indo-European roots

WORD HISTORY:
Eating, biting, teeth, and dentists are related not only logically but etymologically; that is, the roots of the words eat, tooth, and dentist have a common origin. The Proto-Indo-European root *ed-, meaning "to eat" and the source of our word eat, originally meant "to bite." A participial form of *ed- in this sense was *dent-, "biting," which came to mean "tooth." Our word tooth comes from *dont-, a form of *dent-, with sound changes that resulted in the Germanic word *tanthuz. This word became Old English tth and Modern English tooth. Meanwhile the Proto-Indo-European form *dent- itself became in Latin dns (stem dent-), "tooth," from which is derived our word dentist. We find a descendant of another Proto-Indo-European form *(o)dont- in the word orthodontist.



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