teething troubles
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Initial problems or difficulties when starting something new
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Vấn đề hoặc khó khăn ban đầu khi bắt đầu điều gì đó mới
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: problems when teeth are coming in
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Vera Shroff, a mathematics student, found that tutoring brought back the fun of a subject she was having some teething troubles in coping with at university level.
After early season teething troubles, it also proved a threat to the pre - eminence of Senna's McLaren Honda.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “teething troubles” mean?
Initial problems or difficulties when starting something new Literally: problems when teeth are coming in
Is “teething troubles” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.