Moist: another rant

If you want to see some beautiful science, have a look at this article from PLOS ONE.

It's about the word moist, and particularly why the American public dislikes the word so much. 

Well, when I say the American public, an aversion to the word moist is apparently commonest among young, educated, neurotic and female members of the public.

(I should say here that I don't mind the word moist at all (and have already written about it HERE) but then I'm not American or young.)

Five scientific experiments were conducted by Paul Thibodeau from Oberlin College, and were designed to find out why people dislike the word moist so much. Is it the sound? Is it because it's the fashion? Is it because you have to screw up your face in a disgusted kind of a way to say it? Is it because the word might make you think about disgusting things? The results were many and interesting, and can be found by following the Plos One link above, but here are some of the answers.

Prof Thibodeau found that quite often people didn't actually know why they hated the word. People who thought they hated the sound, for instance, proved not to mind words like rejoiced or hoist.

The people who claimed to hate the word moist most violently also loathed words like phlegm and vomit, suggesting that perhaps all these words are avoided for reasons of hygiene. (It's difficult to say whether this disgust is instinctive or learned, until you remember that most people, even young, educated, female, neurotic Americans, don't have any great aversion to the word moist at all. So it's probably learned, then, isn't it?)

But whatever the reasons, think on this: an aversion to the word moist doesn't seem to be doing the sellers of moisturiser any harm, does it?

Word To Use Today Unless It Bugs You: moist. This word is related to the Latin mūcidus, which means musty, and mūcus, which, I'm afraid, means mucus. But then who doesn't have some dodgy relatives?