teeth

Brush.

So is OP oirish?

yesif you mean Irish.

Edited by: ambarush

In Spanish they often say, "lavar la boca", to wash the mouth. But it means to brush your teeth.

In french, "wash" is more common than "brush"

In Spanish they often say, "lavar la boca", to wash the mouth. But it means to brush your teeth.

No, it doesn't. To Brush your teeth is cepillar(se) los dientes+. Well, literally it would be +cepillar tus dientes but the posesive is rarely used in that case in Spanish.

I understand 'cepillar los dientes' is the literal translation, but I rarely hear people actually say it. More often I hear 'lavar la boca'.

Colebozbourne, your profile says you are in the US. What sort of Spanish do you encounter? Mexican? Spanglish? South American? Puerto Rican? Cuban?

Sounds like a dialect issue to me.

I understand 'cepillar los dientes' is the literal translation, but I rarely hear people actually say it. More often I hear 'lavar la boca'.

I don't have statistics about what's more used. However, cepillar(se) los dientes+ and +lavar(se) la boca+ don't have exactly the same meaning. +Cepillar(se) los dientes+ means to brush only your teeth while +lavar(se) la boca+ includes other parts of the mouth too (e.g.: the tongue, the gums...). +Lavar(se) los dientes is also used what bring us back to the brush vs. wash discussion. I don't have statistics about which one is more used in Spanish but a Google search shows more results for "cepillarse los dientes" than for "lavarse los dientes".

I brush my teeth and am lucky enough to only see a dentist every 25 years or so. Last time, they said I must have a "tartar deficiency" because there was nothing to clean.