the.com/filling
The part of the tooth nobody admires but everybody needs.
means A material packed into a cavity in a tooth to restore its shape and stop decay from spreading — or, more broadly, whatever substance occupies the inside of something hollow, from pies to sandwiches.
from Simply "fill" plus the noun-forming suffix "-ing," turning the action into the thing itself. "Fill" traces back through Old English "fyllan" to a very old Germanic root meaning "to make full," itself kin to "full." No hidden drama here — the word has always just meant the stuff that fills.
- amalgam age
- Silver fillings have been used since the 1830s
- gold option
- Gold fillings can last over 20 years
- mercury myth
- Amalgam is roughly half mercury, bound safely in alloy
- composite rise
- Tooth colored resin now outsells metal fillings