The piss has backed up into the mouth, and the molars are doing a backstroke in it?
Or is it supposed to describe some kind of sensation one feels in their back teeth when they have piss really bad?
Or what?
Pretty sure it’s the former.
I’d never heard the expression before when I read it in a French slang book as j’ai les dents du fond qui baignent, and for a while didn’t know it was used in English too. Wonder where it originated.
And in French I think it’s used to mean “I’ve had a lot/too much to drink” rather than literally “I have to pee,” although one problem often accompanies the other…
I’ve definitely felt my teeth itch when I had to pee.
I don’t know how else to describe it.
I’ve heard it as “my teeth are floating” and usually understood it to mean one had drunk so much liquid it had backed up. Figuratively, anyway.
I’ve always thought that’s what it meant.
That’s what I’ve always thought it meant also.
I’ve assumed that it is more figurative than not, but I also get a sensation in my teeth/jaw sometimes when I have to go or start to go. It’s probably related to the infamous piss-shiver issue that has received so much research here at the SD.
It means you’ve turned into a giant bladder.
My German mother learned French and English in school and used this phrase frequently, maybe she picked this up in school or when we lived in France. Thanks for the information! She always used it to mean she had to pee so bad she was filled up to the back molars. As a child, I always got a mental picture of a hollow person filled with pee!
French here. Yes, it means “I’ve had a lot/too much to drink”.
Another vivid French-language expression I’ve heard for the same thing is j’ai les yeux jaunes, “my eyes are yellow.”
This ^^^^
And not this ^^^^
I believe, “My back teeth are floating” is the more commonly used phrase.
As Cheech put it “Get me outta here man! I gotta go! My back teeth are floating, man.” - *Up in Smoke (1978)
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