Flustrating and regusting...

@abacadaba: I could never get the hang of it either, only accidentally.

Keep in mind that this doesn't mean it's getting an entry in the OED. The "Word of the Year" is just a way to drive dictionary sales.

That said, I really wish people (myself included, ugh) would stop rubbernecking at that huckster.

Ok, this confirms that the term "gleeking" (as a form of spitting) did in fact exist outside the Naches, WA environs in a pre-Internet-as-carrier-mechanism era. The term just kind of showed up at school one day and then all the cool kids were "gleeking" for months on end, so I thought someone just made it up.

I could never gleek, either. So if someone gleeked on me, I would just spit in their face (like a light spit, like if you went "ththththththththththth" and just blew spit through your teeth). It was a good way to get people to not gleek on me. True story!

Yeah, my friends and cousins back in IN were all doing that and burping the alphabet while I looked on with glee (haha!) and made futile attempts to copy them.

Gleeking existed in Virginia middle schools, as well. As far as Sarah Palin being legitimized by a mainstream bunch of intellectual eggheads... well, I don't even think she would like that.

"Gleeking" was a thing here in Portland too.

I seem to remember it showing up the same way it did for the rest of you right around 1995, give or take a year.

We were gleeking here in '85 and calling it such.