You’ll never understand how much people hate the word “moist” until you use it in a social media post.
A while back, I commented on a post on Instagram about foggy windows causing car accidents. My comment read: “You get foggy windshields when you have moist air in your car.”
Guess what followed?
The next ten comments after mine were just attacking me.
“Why must you mention moist?” “Don’t you think moist is wrong for this context?” “Can’t you go with humid?” “Another moist person, you people are weird.”
At first, I thought it was a joke until I started getting many dislikes for my comment. It wasn’t long before I removed the comment.
“Why the hate?” I asked my cousin. He said, “Don’t you know that “moist” makes people squeamish?”
“Squeamish, you say. Wow, wow, wow. That is serious.”
From that day on, I started digging into the phenomenon around the word “moist.” I wanted to know what’s with the hate, where it stems from, and what can be done to correct the aversion.
Read on to find out what I found.
People hate “moist”: Truth or myth?
This is an absolute truth. Many people legit hate seeing the word anywhere. In fact, if some people could, they would remove “moist” from the English language.
Recent surveys into the hatred of “moist”
In a bid to assess just how far the hate for this word runs, Buzzfeed and The New Yorker did some digging. Guess what they found?
- Buzzfeed created a post and titled it “Why Moist Is The Worst Word Ever.” In no time at all, this post outperformed most of the outlet’s previous works. It got over 4 million views.
- In 2012, The New Yorker asked its readers to suggest a word they’d like to see eliminated from the English language. Guess which word ranked atop the nomination list? Moist. Again.
Who are these people that hate “moist”?
Logically, one might assume that only a fraction of persons dislikes the word. But the findings from a group of psychologists from Oberlin College in Ohio and Trinity University in San Antonio will surprise you.
These groups ran a series of psychological experiments to determine the percentage of the population that frowns at the word moist.
Guess how many people they found?
More than 20 percent of the people surveyed had an aversion to the word.
This then begs the question, what has “moist” done to inspire such hatred and disdain? For real, this is sounding like a “you against the world” kinda vibe. Why would twenty out of every 100 Americans say they hate you? What have you done to inspire such ire?
Let’s find out!
Why do people hate the word “moist”?
According to one of the researchers from Oberlin College in Ohio – Paul Thibodeau, a cognitive psychologist – there are three possible reasons why people hate “moist.”
- It could be because of the way it sounds – /mɔɪst/.
- It could be because of its association with bodily fluids – obviously, the concept of moisture is marked by a fluid discharge.
- It could be because of the general perspective that the word is disgusting.
Hypothesis 1: Could it because of the way it sounds?
Thibodeau discovered it is not. People don’t have an issue with the way the word sounds. In fact, many of the surveyed individuals in Thibodeau’s experiment claimed they like similar words like ‘foist,’ ‘hoist,’ and ‘joist.’ That means the sound is not the problem.
However, a few participants still argued that the sound is a big turn-off too. As one participant puts it, “It just has an ugly sound that makes whatever you’re talking about sound gross.”
Hypothesis 2: Could it be because of its association with bodily fluids?
Oh, you bet it is.
In a bid to find out whether this was the reason for the hate, Thibodeau threw similarly disgusting words like “phlegm,” “vomit,” and “diarrhea” at the participants. They felt just the same disgust towards these as they did towards “moist.” This gave Thibodeau the impression that the hatred of “moist” is most associated with its connotations to bodily fluids.
Hypothesis 3: Could it be because of the consensus about the word?
Yes, it could be.
Thibodeau found that when “moist” was combined with other fancy or tasty words like “cake” or “paradise,” participants didn’t frown at it.
But when unrelated awkward words accompanied it, people felt somehow grossed out.
Another point worth noting from Thibodeau’s experiment is that many people hate the word because it reminds them of sex and vaginas (no disrespect). Not because they hate either word, but because they don’t find it comfortable thinking about those things.
Summarily, we can conclude that people hate the word “moist” because of its connotations of bodily fluids and the consensus that it’s disgusting.
Is moist the only word people hate?
LOL, has anything ever walked alone? “Moist” has some friends traveling with it on the hate bus.
- Feces/poop
- Crevice
- Ointment
- Fetus
- Panties
- Phlegm
- Saliva
- Lugubrious
- Dollop
- Blood
- Slurp
- Riddle
- Trump
- Pulp
- Mucus
You probably didn’t notice it before now, but if you think about it, you’ll realize you don’t really like coming across these words. Imagine reading through a novel, and you spot a line that reads, “Everything was sticky with mucus and blood.” You’ll most likely feel disgusted immediately.
Word aversion: What is it?
In simple terms, word aversion refers to your dislike of words like “moist.”
In Professor Paul Liberman’s more complicated words,
“Word aversion is a feeling of intense, irrational distaste for the sound or sight of a particular word or phrase, not because its use is regarded as etymologically or logically or grammatically wrong, nor because it’s felt to be over-used or redundant or trendy or non-standard, but simply because the word itself somehow feels unpleasant or even disgusting.”
Any word you hate the sight of because it sounds or feels unpleasant is said to be one that you have a word aversion for.