Ben Zimmer over at Visual Thesaurus sez in yesterday's column that the word moist is so reviled it has its own Facebook group called "I HATE the word MOIST!" He goes on to say: "It's difficult to find any unifying thread for these words that get people's
goat. But much like the enjoyable words on the 'favorites' list like
serendipity and mellifluous, there's a certain sound/sense
combination that sparks these word aversions. Why does moist merit a
Facebook group of haters, while hoist and joist go unnnoticed?
It's more than just the sound of the word: the disliked words tend to have some
basic level of ickiness. As I told the Albany Times Union, this
ickiness can have to do with slimy stuff, bodily discharge, or other things that
people would prefer not to think about. Icky words include nostril,
crud, pus, and pimple. Ointment and
goiter share the "oi" sound with moist: there must be
something about that diphthong that gets under people's skin." The WBF staff talked amongst ourselves and decided we think the word icky is icky.
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acclaimed (again, pretty much US) Dave & Brad
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online and off. All your laffs are belong to us.