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PlainSpell

sawtooth

/ˈsɔːtuːθ/noun

sawtooth is a noun meaning “A tooth of a saw: any of its series of projections, each with a cutting edge” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-A-W-T-O-O-T-H, and it appears about once in every 4 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of sawtooth is sawteeth or sawtooths.

What does sawtooth mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A tooth of a saw: any of its series of projections, each with a cutting edge.

    Holonyms: sawblade < saw

  2. 2

    Something else that is shaped like such a tooth (for example, a roof or each peaked portion thereof; a curve or waveform on a graph).

  3. 3

    A sawtooth wave.

  4. 4

    Any of various pierid butterflies of the genus Prioneris.

  5. 5

    A pattern whose living cell population reaches new peaks infinitely many times before dropping to a fixed value after each peak.

  6. 6

    The military barracuda, Sphyraena putnamae.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce sawtooth?

  • /ˈsɔːtuːθ/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Forms of sawtooth

  • sawteeth plural
  • saw tooth
  • sawtooths plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is sawtooth?

Sawtooth appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 62,894th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Words people confuse with sawtooth

Also written: saw-tooth (one word or two).

Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Sawtooth in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense cutting bit of a saw:

LanguageWords
Frenchdent de scie
GermanSägezahn

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does sawtooth come from?

From saw + tooth.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).