Why moist is the worst word

So, what's the deal with word aversion, and does it only apply to words that sound disgusting? Read on to learn why you hate the words you hate. 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.

That definition is according to linguistics professor Paul Liberman. And basically, it means extreme dislike of a particular word -- for reasons that make sense, or reasons that don't. This isn't a hatred of the word "nuclear" because so many people mispronounce it, and it isn't a distaste for the word "presentation" because it brings you feelings of dread about your next board meeting.

Word aversion is specifically being provoked by the word itself -- and often feeling disgusted by it. Like in Thibodeau's experiment, there might not always be one reason why people feel the way they feel so strongly about a word -- it could be the way it sounds, it could be its associations, or it could be because your friends and family hate the word, too.

There's also the possibility that that dissemination of this information -- in articles like these and in viral videos -- could accelerate that societal aversion to words that are talked about a lot -- like the word 'moist.

Other words people commonly feel a strong aversion to include :. So the next time you have to sit down to write a blog post, think up an ad tagline, or write something on Facebook, choose your words carefully -- or poll your coworkers around you to see if you might inadvertently be writing some copy that will make your audience shudder and gag.

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Oberlin College psychologist Paul Thibodeau, though, has a theory as to why large swathes of Anglophones scream internally at moistened mumbles. Writing in his paper A Moist Crevice for Word Aversion in the online journal PLoS One , he posits the following: we hate the word moist because it conjures up mental images of the moistest parts of ourselves, triggering our disgust reflex by reminding us of the many ways our bodies moisten.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most frequent answer was the link between the word and its significant sexual overtones, although the people with the strongest aversion to it hate the sound even more by the sound than meaning.

There was a discernible link, however, between those who hate moist and those hating its synonyms damp or words related to bodily functions. After finding no conclusive scientific data to back it up, the study took the very unscientific approach of showing one group of participants a video produced by People Magazine called These Sexy Men Make the Worst Word Sound Hot. The control group was exposed to, perhaps, the most palatable moistness, a video of people using the word to describe cake.

Despite their best efforts, the likes of Ed Sheeran and Matt LeBlanc could not muster a moist sexy enough to not disturb the group, with the people who watched the first video showing considerably more distaste for the word.

As such, the conclusions reached at the end of the study suggest that the lexical link to bodily fluids and functions paints moist in a bad light, but that there is also an intense social link. Live: Title. Thibodeau tested the relative dislike of "moist" against some truly heinous words. Via The Psych Report. His experiments had participants rate a slew of words on several categories, including how aversive and negative the word appeared to participants.

First off, he determined that, yes, moist aversion is a thing: About 18 percent of study participants found displeasure in the word "moist. The tests allowed him to create a relative scale of words we don't like.

He found that participants think "moist" is more pleasant than "fuck" but less pleasant than "gold. See the chart above. What might be driving the "moist" haters? As he explains on the website The Psych Report:. In contrast, moist-averse participants were not more sensitive to words that had similar phonological properties to "moist" like "foist," "hoist," or "rejoiced" or to words related to sex like "vagina" and "penis.

That could be the work of cultural learning: TV shows, social media, and magazines tell us the word "moist" is gross and so we believe it. Can "moist" ever be redeemed? That's what People magazine tried to do when they had their "sexiest men alive" say "moist" with panache in a video meant to make this "worst word" sound "hot. A writer at Refinery 29 summed up her reaction: "this video is pure sadism. It's torture, it's rude, and it's awful," she wrote.

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