Anterior teeth are the front teeth, the ones that show when your child smiles.

In kid words

Your front teeth are the ones that show when you smile. They are also the teeth you use to bite into something like an apple or a slice of pizza. The teeth further back have a different job, chewing, and that is why dentists have a separate word for them too.

The parent version

Anterior teeth is the plain clinical term for the front teeth: the incisors and canines. It is usually paired with its opposite, posterior teeth, the back teeth used mainly for chewing.

The split exists because the two groups do different jobs. Anterior teeth are shaped for biting and for the visible line of a smile, while posterior teeth are broader and built for grinding food down. That difference is why a dentist might describe a tooth by where it sits rather than just calling it a tooth. Exactly which teeth count as anterior shifts a little between a child's first set of teeth and the adult teeth that follow, and your pediatric dentist can always point out which is which in your child's own mouth.

Where you might hear it at our office

This word tends to come up if a front tooth ever needs a repair. A crown on a back molar is usually durable stainless steel, built for heavy chewing, but a crown on a front tooth is natural-looking resin instead, because that tooth's job is the smile, not the grinding. The same thinking shapes tooth-colored fillings, which are built to blend into the smile rather than stand out.

You can see how repairs are matched to each tooth on our restorative dentistry page. And if another word from a visit is still a mystery, the rest of the dictionary is right here.

Related words

Words that often come up alongside anterior teeth: canine, bicuspid, molar.