A Matter of "Moist"

Pity the poor, little, abused word "moist." For whatever reason, this word has been relegated to being the unloved, misunderstood, red-headed stepchild of the ABC's. Its power is phenomenal as a large number of women have taken to hating the very sound of the word, reducing them to shuddering in revulsion.

Why?

Let's look up the definition. "Slightly wet; damp or humid." Seems pretty innocuous to me, right? Further research leads me down a giant, moist rabbit-hole with one source calling it "possibly the most hated word in the dictionary."

This phenomenon escaped me for a while until several years back when I caught an episode of the amiably goofy sit-com, "How I Met Your Mother," wherein Allyson Hannigan's character confessed to a deep hatred of the word "moist," so naturally Neil Patrick Harris' character repeated the word over and over and over in a one-man, off-off-way-off Broadway show. Funny, but hardly damning evidence. And honestly, I kinda thought this was where the rare phenomenon began and ended: a dumb punch-line in a dumb show.

Until I started meeting women who confessed to despising the word. Someone tell me why!

I know, let's consult a very knowledgeable source, "the BroBible." They take it a step further and claim that EVERY woman hates the poor lil' word. But I'm kinda hesitant to take anyone who calls themselves "the BroBible" at their word.

So let's move onto a more credible source (barely): Cosmopolitan Magazine. They report that an Oberlin College psychologist, Dr. Paul Thibodeau, conducted a study (the doctor was having a slow year, I suspect) on why the hate for "moist." Interestingly, he discovered that men dislike the word as well. Out of a study of 2,500 people, 18% had issues with the word. Those most likely to be impacted moistly tended to be highly educated females.

Doc Thibodeau and his colleagues threw a bunch of words at the study's participants, some rhyming with "moist," like "hoist." No one had problems with hoist, foist, or anything else that sounded like it, so he came to the conclusion that it's not the sound of the word.

The study also found that the word is generally associated with gross bodily functions. (Now I could give examples, but I don't want you spitting out your morning coffee).

One final hypothesis is people think moist is gross because everyone else does. You know, the lemming effect. Kinda like The Big Lie (wait, how did that slip in here? Sorry, sorry, sorry...). 

Bouncing back to the BroBible for one last tidbit of interest (true or false and not mentioned in the Cosmo article) is they claim Dr. Thibodeau's study found one other factor in that women were disgusted by the word because they'd heard it associated with another foul word, such as a body part or article of clothing. Well... Sounds to me like these women are hanging out with the charmers at the BroBible headquarters, maybe.

It got me thinking about other reviled words (and whether other college studies waste money studying these phenoms).  Oxford Dictionaries and other sources have compiled a handy-dandy list of the nine most hated English words. Topping the list is--wild guess--"moist," the clear winner. The next word is a puzzler: "flap." C'mon, those birds aren't going to fold and unfold their wings! Third is "whatever," which I totally get (even though I use it constantly), as it's extremely dismissive. The following two words must've come from old fuddle-duddies: "dude" and "like." Granted, I've heard some, like,  teenagers who use these words, like, five times in a sentence, dude. Hey, how did "literally" get on the list? Probably because people overuse it? I mean, like, literally! "Flaccid" comes in next, no explanation necessary. "Panties" has the number 8 position. My sister-in-law is both affected by this word and moist. Recently, she said, "they're not panties! They're underwear!" When you come right down to it, it does seem kinda...I dunno, baby-speak. Finally, rounding out the list is "pus." WHAAAAAT? Who doesn't like pus?

There you have it.

As a writer, of course, it's my duty to write as many of these words into a sentence as possible: "Literally in the wind, the moist panties flapped flaccidly on the clothes-line, next to the dude's pus-stained Tee-shirt...like, whatever." Hey, I never said it'd be a good sentence.

Moist is a perfectly fine word. Truly there's no other way to describe good cake. "Man, this cake is damp" just doesn't cut it. And moist has been a word since 1325 A.D. so it has legs (although maybe that's why France invaded England. You know, for their overuse of the word). Don't you all take "moist" away from me!

Have a moist day.

Now that I've got that off my chest, Corporate Wolf is a particularly moist book. I mean that in the best horror novel tradition possible, of course! In this werewolf, darkly comic tale, the blood flows moistly. Check it out here!