cut one's teeth on

Idioms

Also, cut one's eyeteeth on. Get one's first experience by doing, or learn early in life, as in I cut my teeth on this kind of layout or He cut his eyeteeth on magazine editing. This term alludes to the literal verb to cut teeth, meaning “to have teeth first emerge through a baby's gums,” a usage dating from the late 1600s.

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023