Dental means having to do with the teeth. Dental care, a dental appointment, dental records.
It is the formal adjective — you say dental treatment and tooth decay, not toothly anything. Dental records are used to identify bodies, because teeth survive when almost nothing else does. Dental floss, dental hygienist and dental practice are the standard compounds. In phonetics, a dental sound is one made with the tongue against the teeth, which is what the th of think is. Note dentist, dentures and dentistry.
1adjectivedentalHaving to do with the teeth.
“Dental treatment there costs about a third of what it does at home.”
dental is a quality relating to teeth.
Latin dentalis comes from dens, a tooth — the same root as dentist, indent, meaning to notch like teeth, and dandelion, from dent de lion, a lion's tooth, named for the leaf.
Medieval Latin
dentālis
Middle French
dental
English, today
dental
Borrowed from Middle French dental, from Medieval Latin dentālis. Middle French dental or Latin dentālis, from dēns + -ālis.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA