What does drooling mean?
"Drooling" is the present participle of the verb "drool," describing the involuntary escape of saliva from the mouth — common in infants, during sleep, or when appetite is strongly stimulated by the sight or smell of food. By figurative extension, it also denotes an excessive, often unseemly display of desire or admiration, as when fans are said to be "drooling over" a celebrity or a gadget. The word is informal in tone and slightly comic or undignified in flavor, which makes it vivid in everyday speech and journalism alike. Its literal sense is useful in medical and caregiving contexts, where persistent drooling may signal a treatable condition. Whether literal or figurative, "drooling" conveys loss of composure — the body or the mind surrendering to appetite.
To let saliva flow from the mouth, especially involuntarily; figuratively, to display eager or excessive admiration.
"The dog lay drooling beside the dinner table."
The figurative sense almost always takes "over" as its preposition.
An instance or state of saliva flowing from the mouth.
"Wipe up that drooling before someone slips on it."
Used mainly informally; medical writing prefers terms like sialorrhea.
Humans drool roughly two to four pints of saliva a day — most of it simply gets swallowed without our noticing.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of drooling
The verb "drool" first appears in English around the early nineteenth century, likely originating as a dialectal variant of "drivel," an older word for the same phenomenon that dates back to Middle English. Some etymologists connect it further with "drawl" and "drizzle," suggesting a family of expressive words formed on similar sound-symbolic patterns. Its figurative sense of showing foolish or excessive desire developed naturally from the literal one.
Related word forms
How drooling is actually used
"Drooling" is informal-to-neutral in register; it carries a mildly comic or undignified connotation when applied to people, and is often used figuratively for greedy or besotted admiration, typically in the phrase "drooling over." In medical contexts it may be referred to more formally as hypersalivation or sialorrhea.
Easily confused with drooling
Drizzling describes light falling rain, while drooling describes saliva flowing from the mouth.
Drawling means speaking slowly with elongated vowels, whereas drooling refers to saliva escaping the mouth or eager gawking.