About

Gleeking is a slang term for the taught or accidental ability to discharge a long stream of saliva out of one's mouth by lifting the tongue upward and pressing it against the salivary glands. Referred to by that name since the late 1990s, the skill repeatedly went viral online throughout the 2000s and 2010s, including TikTok in the 2020s as various users demonstrated their ability to gleek.

Origin

Gleeking refers to the ability to produce a thin stream of saliva from a salivary gland located under a tongue. Gleeking can performed by flexing one's tongue and extending it against the roof of your mouth, opening your mouth and flexing the tongue to press liquid out of the gland. Only a percentage of humans are able to gleek on command.^[1][2]

The earliest documented use of the slang term "to gleek" to describe the ability is an October 18th, 1999, post by Usenet^[3] user Gem.

I just push the tip of my tongue against the roof of my mouth and saliva squirts out in a groovy little arc. I think you'd really have to see it to know what I am talking about. but you can gleek best right after chewing big red gum.

"Gleek" was then added to Urban Dictionary^[12] by user mike on April 26th, 2003, accumulating nearly 4,200 likes in 22 years.

On May 20th, 2010, the YouTube channel Howcast uploaded a video titled "How to Gleek," earning over 2.4 million views, 13,000 likes and 2,900 comments in roughly 15 years, becoming one of the earliest viral videos using the slang term.

On October 25th, 2015, British YouTuber^[4] and radio host Phil Lester made the earliest viral post about gleeking, joking that he might use it as his talent for a Britain's Got Talent audition. The post (shown below) garnered over 4,000 reposts and 18,000 likes in 10 years.

Spread

On December 10th, 2016, the YouTube channel DoingDumbThings uploaded a video titled "Gleek World Record" that showed a man named Roland Johnsen performing 28 gleeks in one minute, purportedly holding the world record at the time. The video received over 86,000 views and 390 likes in roughly eight years.

On August 3rd, 2020, TikTok^[5] user @sebastiankivela posted the earliest found viral video about gleeking on the platform, which received over 4.3 million views and 148,100 likes in five years (shown below).

In 2021 and onward, more users on TikTok posted videos in which they demonstrated their ability to gleek and reacted to gleeking videos shared by other users.

For example, on April 18th, 2021, TikTok^[6] user @sarahrhomrich posted a guide for gleeking that received over 11,000 likes in four years (shown below).

On August 9th, 2021, WikiHow posted a guide video for gleeking that accumulated over 1 million views on YouTube^[7] in four years.

On February 28th, 2023, orthodontist and TikToker^[8] @thebentist posted a video about gleeking in which he reacted to a viral, since-removed video by TikToker @3.magical.fairysuwu. The upload (shown below) received over 299,000 likes in two years.

More gleeking videos went viral on TikTok^[9][10] in 2023 and 2024. On January 28th, 2025, The Guardian^[11] notably reported on the trend.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References