Other forms: salivating
To salivate is to produce saliva, especially at the thought of food. Enough to make you salivate.
It is the reflex Pavlov made famous by ringing a bell at dogs. People also salivate over a car or a contract, which is the same word doing figurative work.
1verbsalivateTo produce saliva, especially at the thought of food.
“The smell alone made him salivate.”
salivate is a reaction.
Latin salivare, from saliva, spittle. An adult produces something like a litre of it a day, and most of the work it does is digestive rather than about swallowing.
Latin
salivatus
English, today
salivate
Built from
From Latin salivatus, past participle of salivare (“to spit out, also salivate”), from saliva (“spittle”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA