If you follow me on X, you’ve probably heard me say it.
When something gets under my skin — a bad driver, poor manners, somebody littering their garbage out the car window, or internet trolling — I’ll tell you it makes my teeth itch.
People ask me about it all the time. What does that even mean? Where’d you get that?
The answer is simple: Brandon.
I’d heard the expression before. It wasn’t new to me. But Brandon says it so naturally anytime something gets on his nerves that it eventually worked its way into my own vocabulary. Like the best Southern expressions, it just slipped in and never left. Now I say it without even thinking.
It’s the perfect expression.
Some irritations stay in your head. Others feel physical. They tighten your jaw, raise your blood pressure, and make your teeth tingle. Saying something annoys me doesn’t quite cover it. Saying it makes my teeth itch gets a whole lot closer.
It’s stronger than “gets on my nerves” and more polite than what I’m usually tempted to say.
I never gave much thought to where it came from until people started asking about it in the comments. Once that seed of curiosity was planted, I had to chase down the answer.
What I found surprised me.
This phrase is far older than Brandon, older than me, older than the South, and even older than America or her colonies.
Folks have been talking about itching teeth for more than two thousand years.
Around 200 BCE, the Roman comic playwright Plautus used the image in his plays. In Amphitruo, a nervous slave spots trouble coming and exclaims, “Perii, dentes pruriunt!” — “I’m done for — my teeth itch!” His characters complained about itching teeth when they were nervous, anticipating trouble, or basically asking for a fight. It captured that prickling mix of dread and bodily tension right before something unpleasant happened — when your whole body knew what was coming before your brain caught up.
Once I found that, I started noticing the same idea popping up everywhere. The Bible speaks of teeth being “set on edge” by sour grapes. Shakespeare reached for similar dental imagery when describing deep irritation. Across centuries and languages, humans kept returning to this strange but vivid metaphor: when something truly grates on you, it feels like your teeth are crawling.
Somehow that ancient sensation survived and made its way into Southern speech, where it found a perfect home. Our language has always loved turning physical feelings into emotional ones — “bless your heart,” “madder than a wet hen,” “fit to be tied.”
“Makes my teeth itch” belongs right there in that colorful tradition.
That’s one of the things I love about regional language. We don’t always realize we’re carrying around expressions that have traveled through generations of storytellers, farmers, preachers, grandparents, and neighbors. We inherit them without knowing where they came from.
Somebody passed “makes my teeth itch” down to Brandon.
Brandon passed it down to me.
And now I’m passing it along to all y’all.
