Long before a tooth appears, it exists as a tooth bud, tucked beneath the gum.

In kid words

"Under your gum, before a tooth ever shows up, there's a tiny tooth bud already getting ready to grow in." Every tooth starts out this way, hidden and small, long before it is ready to be seen. Even the teeth you have not grown yet are already down there, quietly waiting their turn.

The parent version

A tooth bud is the earliest form of a tooth, a small cluster of developing tissue that forms within the jawbone beneath the gum, long before any part of it becomes visible in the mouth. Every tooth, from the first baby tooth to the permanent teeth that follow years later, begins this way.

By the time a baby tooth is showing above the gum, the bud for the permanent tooth that will eventually replace it is often already forming in the bone underneath it. That is simply the usual order of things, not a race or a milestone to track on a chart. What is developing beneath a particular tooth, and how it looks, is something your pediatric dentist can describe if you are ever curious.

Where you might hear it at our office

This word tends to surface after a fall, not before one. A baby tooth that gets knocked loose or knocked out sits directly above the permanent tooth bud still forming in the bone, which is exactly why any real hit to a baby tooth is worth having looked at rather than waited out. Our emergency guides walk through what to do in the moment.

If another word from a visit is still new to you, the rest of the Kids' Dental Dictionary is right here.

Related words

Words that often travel with tooth bud: eruption, exfoliation and dentition.