set someone's teeth on edge
1. Fig. [for a scraping sound] to irritate someone's nerves. That noise sets my teeth on edge! Tom's teeth were set on edge by the incessant screaming of the children.
2. Fig. [for a person or an idea] to upset someone very much. Her overbearing manner usually sets my teeth on edge. The very thought of doing that set her teeth on edge.
set one's teeth on edge
Irritate, annoy, make one cringe, as in That raucous laugh sets my teeth on edge. This expression alludes to the shuddering feeling evoked by a grating noise or similar irritation. It appears in several books of the Bible and was also used by Shakespeare. [c. 1600]
set one's teeth on edge, to
To irritate or annoy intensely. This image evokes the intense shuddering feeling that comes from biting on a piece of tinfoil or hearing a fingernail scratch on a chalkboard. It appears in several books of the Bible (Jeremiah 31:29; Ezekiel 18:2) and, graphically, in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 1: “I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn’d, Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree, And that would set my teeth nothing on edge, Nothing so much as mincing poetry.”