Denticity

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The number and arrangement of teeth a particular animal or dental set possesses, used as a classification feature in zoology and dentistry
2. A count of the teeth present in a given species or set, which helps describe its dental makeup for scientific study
3. The total quantity of teeth in an organism's jaws, a characteristic often used to distinguish one kind of animal from another

Etymology: "Denticity" is a technical coinage from chemistry, built from Latin "dentis," the genitive form of "dens," meaning "tooth." The "-icity" ending, borrowed through French from Latin "-icitas," turns an adjective into an abstract noun of quality, so the word names the state or property of being toothed or having teeth. In chemistry it refers to the number of points at which a ligand binds to a central metal atom, so a ligand that attaches at two sites has a denticity of two. The imagery of teeth fits because a bidentate ligand grips the metal much as a pair of jaws would clamp onto something. Chemists needed a single term for this count of binding sites, and "denticity" supplied one from a root that already described teeth in Latin.