Ptyalism

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The abnormal overproduction of saliva that causes the mouth to fill with spit more than usual
2. A medical condition in which the salivary glands produce far more saliva than normal, leading to drooling
3. Excessive salivation, a state in which a person continually generates an unusually large amount of spit

Etymology: Ptyalism is a medical term for excessive salivation, and its ancestry runs back to a Greek verb meaning "to spit." The Ancient Greek noun "ptualismós" meant "salivation," built on "ptuein," "to spit," so the physical act of spitting sits at the root of the word. Greek physicians and writers used the verb for the expulsion of saliva, and the noun carried the same bodily sense. The English word is a learned borrowing that passed through the classical stock of medical vocabulary rather than arriving through everyday speech. Its form preserves the Greek "pt-" opening, a spelling that English readers often find surprising, since the initial "p" is pronounced in the Greek but is commonly silent in English words that retain it. The Greek origin was never obscured: the word was kept as a technical label for a symptom that physicians needed to name precisely.

Synonyms: sialorrhea, hypersalivation, ptyalorrhea

Antonyms: xerostomia