Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Ptyalin
/ˈtaɪəlɪn/noun
The starch-digesting enzyme in human saliva, now usually called salivary amylase.
The Greek roots
πτύαλον
ptýalon
spittle, saliva
πτύειν
ptýein
to spit
Literally: “the saliva substance”
The story of the word
Named in the 1830s, when chemists first showed that spit starts digesting bread before it is swallowed. The Greek verb πτύειν is a mouth noise made into a word, and its relatives across the family are equally blunt: Latin spuere, English spit. English readers stumble because we cannot pronounce pt- at the start of a word, so the p goes silent in ptyalin, pterodactyl and Ptolemy alike.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
In a sentence
Chew a cracker slowly and the ptyalin makes it taste faintly sweet.
Stomach acid shuts down ptyalin within minutes of swallowing.