Ptyalism (the P is silent) is simply the medical term for people who drool. M-w.com says:

Main Entry: pty·a·lism
Pronunciation: -”li-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin ptyalismus, from Greek ptyalismos, from ptyalizein to salivate, from ptyalon
: an excessive flow of saliva

It doesn’t get much more straight forward than that.

So. What to say about a no-nonsense word like ptyalism?

At first blush, it’s the type of thing at which children giggle and that many adults try not to notice. Going deeper than that may seem an exercise in superfluous pontification, but superfluous pontification is actually the whole purpose of this site.  So onward we must go.

The wikipedia entry for ptyalism says that it isn’t dangerous; constant drooling is just an annoyance that people who suffer from ptyalism have to live with.

I think that’s the crux of ptyalism and many other medical malodies: it’s an ever-present annoyance that you have to live with. It’s the neighbors whose kids start a loud garage rock band that practices at 8 pm every night. It’s the traffic jam that brings frustrated drivers to a standstill at exactly the same place every afternoon when all they want is to just get home from work and try to unwind.

I’m reminded of the French poet Charles Baudelaire, who wrote:

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it–it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

Borrowing from Mr. Baudelaire’s sentiments, whatever our own personal ptyalisms might be bending us to the earth, may we have the grace:

  • to ignore them in our own lives,
  • to lighten them in the lives of others, and
  • to shine them into non-existence with the pleasures of friends, family, poetry, virtue and libations!