Someone asked why everyone hates the word “moist”. I find the question disturbing, because I love the word “moist”, but OK, let’s play the game and see what excuses people give.
Researchers ruled out the “oi” possibility by asking participants who hated the word “moist” to rate how uncomfortable words like “foist” and “hoist” made them feel, and sure enough, they didn’t merit the same discomfort. Instead, the results suggested that we hate the word because it has unpleasant connotations. People rated it more aversive when it followed positive words, like “paradise,” as well as sexual words. According to researchers, this could be because the preceding positive words highlight how much we dislike “moist,” and sexual words “primed a more negative, sexual interpretation.”
One participant summed it up perfectly: “It reminds people of sex and vaginas.” (That remark could also open a whole discussion on how society conditions us to hate vaginas, but that’s way beyond the scope of this article.)
Finally, the research also showed that people who hate the word “moist” also hate semantically similar words like “damp,” indicating that it really is our associations with the word that make us hate it so much.
That seems a little odd, to me at least — words that I associate with sex and water have positive connotations. I can agree in principle that it is the chain of associations that give the word its poor reputation, but I think they’ve only gotten to the first link — there must be something further down the series of associations that makes references to sex and dampness unpleasant.
I’ve been trying to think of any word that makes me feel icky…I wouldn’t be surprised if there were, but I can’t come up with one. All the people annoyed that I wrote “moist” repeatedly will have to try and get revenge by hitting me with a word that might make me cringe.
As a hiker who has been in a few rainshowers before, “damp” makes me think of wet, clammy, cold and uncomfortably clothes and chafing or – in the summer or hot, wet climes – unbearable air humidity. I never much understood the dislike for “moist”, though, although I had guessed at some of the reasons suggested above.
It reminds me of chocolate cake. Mmm, cake…
I’ve never much understood this, either. If something’s damp you’d probably prefer it to be dry; I don’t want damp clothes or damp hair or for mould to grow in the damp corners of my home. If something’s moist it’s probably good that way: a moist towelette, a nice moist piece of cake, etc. It’s as opposed to dry or stale, in a similar space to juicy. Maybe it’s a matter of regional variation in how often its used with what connotations?
I recall being asked once, as some kind of pop psychological test, whether “moist” or “used” sounded worse to me. Of course, if you go with a vaginal angle (which seemed the clear intent), either is a bad choice. For towelettes, though, I can’t fathom why anyone would say “moist”.
I’ve always thought it was a lovely word, but i’m a dirty foreigner, so what do i know.
Anything that reminds me of humid forests, moss and the smell of leave-litter is a good word in my book. Plus, you know, Moist Von Lipwig.
Well, I don’t like if my socks or my pants are moist, and moisture destroys stored food and other perishables, and high humidity is uncomfortable if not downright miserable. I like getting wet — swimming in the ocean or whatever — but not being moist. Not sure why the sexual association is negative for people, but generally, moisture is associated with discomfort and putrefaction. So I get that.
In the first episode of the show “Dead Like Me”, Georgia describes her mother as hating the word “moist”:
That “moist” is a commonly hated word is news to me.
I’ll swim upstream and mention my favorite word, more for the concept than its euphony: cascade.
Republican – that’s the word that makes me feel icky.
This reminds me of the most confusing order I ever read for wound care instructions. “MOIST to DRY not DAMP to DRY” The Dr. was unhappy with the amount of saline on the gauze directly applied to the wound base. 12 years later I”m not sure if I should have used less or more saline.
to share, cuz axed [phonetic spelling, eh]
moist = “wet” without drops of water. As in, Moderately Wet.
mmmmmm @2 yessssss
I think the aversion to “moist” is cuz it is such a mixed metaphor. Referral for both scrumptious stuff (re @2), and “icky” stuff (re lady bits). We like words to have single, clear, unambiguous meanings, for communication purposes.
Also,maybe something about the mmm phoneme leading the oy, the two combined; reason “foist” & “hoist” disqualify.
“Creation Museum”? (Ok, that’s two words.)
Panties has icky connotations for a lot of women, due to it being used in a leering manner by creepy men. (“I want to sniff your panties,” that sort of thing.)
@ 6 Chris Clark
And (later?) in the series (as a ghost or grim reaper or whatever) I remember that she moved magnetic letters on her mother’s fridge to spell what I suppose for decency we should call “The M Word”.
Of all the silly bits of research I’ve read about lately, this may be the woist.
I honestly believe it’s related to what one blog post I ran across referred to as the “Warhol Effect” (which I can’t seem to find because the Google results are flooded with tutorials on how to use Photoshop and GIMP filters): that most people don’t actually like Warhol’s artwork, but claim to because everyone else says they do.
(And the same with the hatred of clowns. Everyone I’ve ever asked either can’t give a specific reason [“I just don’t like them!”], or, amazingly, they all had the same exact experience of a clown picking them — and them alone, out of the entire audience — to publicly humiliate when they went to the circus as a child.)
I have no idea why this is so, but mormons in my area have a lingo all their own and one of their common sayings is “we need the moisture” instead of “we need rain.”
@Lindsay 12 – Yes. I dislike the word panties because I am not a child. It feels infantilizing. I’m a grown woman, I wear underwear. I’m not 6 years old, I don’t wear panties or go to the pottty.
If “moist” is such an unpopular word, how do you explain the popularity of the Seattle Moisture Festival, held every Spring?
Hmmm. The discworld character Moist Von Lipwig is a very popular one. As for me, moist doesn’t have any negative connotations, I like the word just fine.
John Small Berries @ 15:
I have a specific reason – the first time I encountered a clown (one person in clown garb, getting ready to do a private gig), the asshole pulled a gun on me. (Not a real one, but that hardly mattered to me.)
Morgan #3, I was coming to say this. I seem to remember the test was to determine whether you were male or female by asking a series of questions like “do you most dislike the word moist or used”. IIRC in general women disliked “moist” and men disliked “used”
Actually, I remember that quiz, I remember being fascinated (‘cuz I’m a psychologist) and of all the questions that was like the only one that correlated almost like 80-90%. It stuck out to me as significant, so its the only part of the silly test I remember now.
Welp. There goes my idea for a “Paradise Lost” parody…
Am I the only one who has Simon Helberg in my head now?
The microphone is dripping,
My baritone is slipping,
A rhyme into this line I’ll have to foist.
Nobody wants to be moist.
tmscott@18 Isn’t that a year round festival?
“Moist” is a tinny sort of word. “Damp”, on the other hand, is very woody.
_________
John Small Berries #15
I, for one, hate moist of Warhol’s work.
Also, about one-eighth of my family work in a circus so I have a very personal reason to hate clowns.
the idea that there are words that are disliked by some people seems a strange one to me. After all a word is a symbol not the thing, while I may not like moist socks I have nothing against the word moist though the I think idea that moist is a positive state of wetness and damp a negative state of wetness has some merit but not altogether consistent english is pretty flexible in usage.
uncle frogy
@25: Not this year.
I think it’s a jolly word
I have always disliked both moist and panties and am amazed to learn I’m not alone! In addition, I’ve learned recently that what I call “mouth noises” (the sounds associated with eating food) can drive me bonkers. I have to leave the room when I hear my husband eating something. Thank you for showing me that I’m not alone!
I think Dr. Horrible’s henchman ruined “Moist” for everyone. :-)
On a more serious note, are “hoist” and “foist” really that common? I would think words like boy and oil would be better tests of how people feel about the “oi” sound.
I can only think of two contexts where I would normally use the word “moist.” Cakes and handshake
One is obviously very good. The other is very bad.
Huh. The words that are like nails on a chalkboard for me are mostly “cutesy” abbreviations (“hubby,” and so forth).
From the Dr. Horrible commentary , Nobody wants to be moist.
(It’s sung by a character named “Moist”, who copiously sweats all the time)
Lyrics
Nobody wants to be moist
A bunch of overactive pores
I struggle opening doors
And I lose every tug of war
Nobody wants to be wet
Though sweet soul I do secrete
Can’t make damp fingers snap to the beat
The microphone is dripping
My baritone is slipping
A rhyme into this line I’ll have to foist
Nobody want to be moist
Nobody wants to be moist
Though on the dance floor I glide
On stairs I’m petrified
(That’s how Harry Wismer died)
Nobody wants to be soaked
Though it is with a graceful ease
I deduce in which way blows the breeze
Oh sure I have the power
To make paste from a powder
But last time I did that no one rejoiced
Nobody want to be moist
A man so ancillary
My little song is buried
Not till the Commentary is it voiced
Nobody wants to be
Nobody wants to be
Nobody wants to be moist
“The night was sultry.”
I’m fine with “moist”.
I’m not a fan of “irregardless”.
I’m not a fan of “literally” used to mean “figuratively”.
I don’t mind “unique” being used in a continuum, e.g. less/more/most unique, so apparently I’m inconsistent.
Dammit Johnny Vector! Your post magically appeared out of nowhere up there right after I posted!
@33, Azkyroth, “The words that are like nails on a chalkboard for me are mostly “cutesy” abbreviations (“hubby,” and so forth).”
Indeed. Not a fan of “veggies”. Just fucking say “vegetables” already.
Don’t mind “hubby”, but don’t hear it much, either.
It’s always thought that “borridge” was a shit word that doesn’t do the plant any sort of justice.
Never heard of any dislike of the word “moist”, albeit the concept in some contexts can be unpleasant.
The word usage that irritates me to no end is a certain common word used about five times every four words, “so”. As in, “So it’s so like, so, so moist.”
I so once over-so-heard so part of a conversation like so which so seemed to so consist so mostly of the word “so” used so like, so.
Hearing “irregardless” is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. I lose respect for people who use the word. It reeks of pretension and faux-intelligence. But then, I am a pedantic grammar nazi.
About clowns: I think Grisly would be a perfect name for a clown.
I also despise the infantilization of the name Gwen into Gwenie. This has some history that I won’t bore you with.
Sorry carlie, my bad! I accidentally left the Freeze Ray on. Remember kids, always leave the safety on, and never aim at anything you don’t intend to stop the time of.
I think for me the association is that they partly strike me as infantilizing, and partly remind me of a particular sort of attitude and demeanor that I associate, in particular, with my elementary school principal, who decorated her office with a lot of teddy-bear-themed kitsch with slogans like “grin and BEAR it” and whose attitude towards bullying was reasonably summarized by her “see no evil, hear no evil” bears. Dolores Umbridge wasn’t far off…
I’m not sure that’s entirely true. It’s more like it reminds people of bad erotica about sex and vaginas. I can’t hear it without thinking of some wretched hack, pen in hand (don’t want to think about where the other hand is) scribbling feverishly, “the very sight of Dirk Thrust’s turgid manhood brought a flood of moisture to the lions (sic) of the dusky wench hurr hurr”.
Or that could be just me. Maybe I need to read better erotica. :-P
How insane do you have to be to pick up a moist towelette and have it make you think of vaginas?
ummm, is “moist” different than “damp”.
being handed a damp towel is pretty icky, but a moist towel is worse.
IDK I too do not understand all the ‘moist hate’.
John Small Berries @ 15:
Clowns give me the creeps because their faces are obscured. I also dislike masks and facial tattoos for the same reason.
Anyone who bakes considers moist to be a compliment.
#15 Dang it!
I never heard the term “Warhol Effect” but I was going to describe just that and I was going to use the idea of fear of clowns as an example. Oh well. There’s other things. Pretending to be creeped out by grown men with puppets. Pretending to think dressing as a mascot and handing out fliers is degrading. Giving a fuck whether a friend dates your sister or not.
Anyway, in the seventies there was a best-seller called the Book of Lists that listed the 10 worst sounding words and the 10 most pleasant. Being the nitpicker I’ve always been, I objected to “cacophony” (ten worst) as being actually a nice sounding word and “chimes” (ten most pleasant) as a really horrible sounding word. Cacophony *is* kind of fun but it isn’t actually pleasant so I may have exaggerated. But ever since, every time I hear the word “chimes” I can’t help but think that when you actually listen to it “chimes” is one of the most unpleasant words I can think of. I mean, just *listen* to the word “chimes”. Yuck! Right?
I think Moist von Lipwig was specifically named for the weirdness people feel about the word moist.
When my brother was very little, one day he got mad at my mother and decided to call her the most horrible thing he could. He didn’t actually know what the word meant, but it sounded horrible. So he said “You’re … you’re … you’re GORGEOUS!!”.
Larry Clapp @36
Unique means one of a kind. Things can be almost unique, possibly unique, definitely unique or hardly unique. But something cannot be uniquer than something else.
OK, how about this: moist and damp are about the distribution of liquid with regards to the noun in question. A moist piece of cake has an even distributionof liquid throughout; a damp piece was out in the rain. A moist towlette is wet all the way through; a damp towel has some sea spray on it. Handshakes shouldn’t be either, eugh.
Does that distinction make an aversion to the word any more understandable?
meh. Once you open the door to “almost unique” you’ve screwed the logical objection. more/less unique would then mean having greater or less success at being unique.
I, myself, do *not* accept “almost unique” nor “more” or “less” unique and accept “most unique” only as a term of emphasis. However I can’t resist “more or less unique” which I take to mean “unique up to certain practical, albeit possible inaccurately applied, situations”. I shouldn’t accept it but the apparant oxymoron and implied pedantic alternative makes it absolutely irresistible to me.
@51 Al Dente:
But everything is one-of-a-kind in some ways and not others, and that means to different degrees. No other mammals are quite the same as aardvarks. No other mammals are at all like monotremes. Would it be wrong to describe this as monotremes being more one-of-a-kind than aardvarks are?
Does that distinction make an aversion to the word any more understandable?
No.
A words a word. I can hate ugly things but there’s utterly nothing wrong with the word “ugly”. Disliking the word moist doesn’t make any more sense then disliking the words, slimy, sticky, oily, viscous or unctuous. (Hey, “unctuous” is a *great* word.)
“Moist” is one of my favorite words ever. It’s just so much fun to say out loud.
Also, clowns are horrible always! I can tell you exactly why too. Poltergeist (1982)
Oleaginous? Obsequious?
borax @ 9:
Ha. That makes no sense to me, either. My best guess is that doc didn’t have a very good handle on wound care.
When I was a new dad, many years ago, I had the idea for a product delivered in the same form as a ‘moist towelette’. The active ingredients were to be lanolin and ether. One swipe under the nose of a fussy baby’s nose, and they are launched toward a much-needed nap. The lanolin is to avoid chapping their precious little lips… ;)
Moist von Lipwig . . . . .
I’ve always been confused about why people hate this word. The first things I think of when I hear the word “moist” are vaginas and cake, which are both wonderful.
“Moist” always brings to mind a Three Stooges episode. The boys are trying to be plumbers. At one point, Curly gets sprayed in the face by a jet coming out of an electrical socket (oops!). His reaction: “Oh! Moisture!”
I hate the words: rape, incest, and prophet.
I like the word scrotum though so go figure.
My pairing of the three might have something to do with being raised to idolize Joseph Smith.
Moist make me think:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moist_(Canadian_band)
@magistramaria #48:
It seems even the cake-in-a-box products advertise this. Duncan Hines’ boxes say “Deliciously Moist Cake Mix” right on the front, and they don’t seem to suffer for it (at least I don’t think they do; maybe there’s a secret debate over the use of “moist” in food labeling). Save for some powdered sugar or cinnamon, I don’t think you would want most baked goods too dry.
Who knows, maybe it is some nonsensical anti-vaginal thing as well. Of course, I don’t see the same reaction to the word “acidic” (minus various pH woo beliefs), though that could be ignorance of the human body, particularly regarding females.
Fungal growth creeps me out, and fungi grow best in moist, damp, dank places. Creepy darkness filled with parasitic spores. That’s my association for those words. You could assume I’m thinking of vaginas when I say that, but for me it’s more about feet. I grew up reading a lot of war stories, and the concept of boots being the most important army equipment has stuck with me – trench foot, tropical necrotic diseases of the WW2 pacific campaign, no thanks.
Sure, it’s all perfectly natural, doesn’t mean I have to like the idea of fungal infections or worse.
magistramarla wrote:
That depends on what you’re baking. Moist cake or bread is one thing. Moist pie crust or moist breading on foods aren’t usually a complement.
I always like “moisty” as in the English folk song, “One Misty Moisty Morning” – youtube Steelye Span and that title to hear a beauty . . .
diarrhoea
A child I knew named her new doll Diarrhoea because she thought it sounded pretty.
Now there is one screwed-up puppy. He/She hates the word moist because it reminds him/her of something wonderful?
That was the Pope wasn’t it!
Say what?!
Who the hell’s idea was that? Hate vaginas?! A most beautiful word for a moist beautiful organ!
What the hell is the matter with these people? Do they not have anything useful to contribute?
Hate vaginas. Morons.
Lest some forget we all came from there and I for one try to get back there as often as possible!
(Thank you Robin Williams)
Phlegm, both the word and the substance make me gag.
John Small-Berries @15
I can tell you exactly why I hate clowns — they’re fucking scary. It isn’t the “public humiliation” aspect, it’s the “getting up in your face and violating your boundaries” aspect. (Yeah, bad experiences as a child.)
They’re Nightmare Fuel, and there’s an element of the Uncanny Valley going on.
~~~~~
Some of the words that I find absolutely awful are gendered/sexual/racial slurs. We all know what those words are, so I won’t repeat them here.
“Irregardless” makes me want to punch a wall.
Misuse of “literally”, ditto.
“Phlegm” (and “snot”) just make me gag. Literally.
And for the love of god, can we do away with cutesy names for body parts, particularly in regards to genitalia? It drives me fucking nuts when adults use terms like “pee-pee” or “hoo-hah”. (Also, using the proper names for private parts gives children the vocabulary they need to report, say, someone touching them in inappropriate ways.)
Ah, crap. That first link was supposed to end just after “Valley”.
And yet nobody has any particular objection to the word “moisturizer”.
It helps if you pronounce it as Marisa Berenson did in “Cabaret”: “plegma”. Much nicer! And funnier!
And yet the Flemish are nice people who come from Flanders.
Al Dente:
Less/More/Most Unique actually seems more intuitive to me.
Everything is trivially Unique. You’re the only person with your name, issued your SSN, born on the day you were, etc etc.
Things are more or less unique based on how many or few unique traits they have.
If as a child, I had 12 lego people, but only one of them had an eyepatch, they are all trivially unique in that they were MY (belonging to person: name and SSN etc) lego people, each slightly trivially different (only one received on this birthday, only one received from friend X, only one I actually stole from a playmate, etc) but only one is also visually distinct by the inclusion of the eyepatch.
Furthermore, I have 12 lego people, but only 1 teddy bear. While the eyepatch lego is more unique than the standard face lego, eyepatch, by virtue of being another lego, is less unique than my teddy bear, which itself is also less unique than my nephew’s teddy bear because while mine was a mass produced Gund style teddy bear, my nephew’s was handcrafted.
And my nephew’s teddy bear is in turn less unique than a handcrafted stuffed pangolin, as pangolin are a less traditional toy animal.
And that pangolin is less unique than a purple handcrafted toy pangolin, as the purple is a more unusual color.
And yet, at the end of this continuum, if we have two purple, handcrafted toy pangolins, each with a name tag sewn to them, and one is named “Johnny Pango” and the other is named “Hotspur Iskander” Hotspur is more unique by virtue of its less conventional name.
One can continue to introduce traits to make things more unique, but after Handcrafted and unusual animal, the changes again start becoming trivial again
I feel like this started recently and as a regional thing, because I saw people on TV saying they hated that word and didn’t get it. Frankly I still don’t, but it’s been getting more traction on TV and the onlinernets lately.
“I’ve been trying to think of any word that makes me feel icky.”
The Dutch translation of vomit – “kots”.
@Dark Jaguar #79
I remember having conversations about the word moist back in 2003 – I was taking a gap year in Europe and discussing it with other Australians that I met over there. New for some people and places, sure, but it didn’t start recently.
karpad @78: but then aren’t you talking about something being, not more or less unique, but more or less distinctive?
This is the kind of thing that does bug me about drifts in word usage: sure, it’s great when words are repurposed to cover gaps in what we could previously describe, but it’s weird when we stretch one word to cover a gap another word already covers, in such a way that the first word becomes too ambiguous to do its original job.
Each of us are unique, just like everybody else. ?