Linguists: The Word "Moist" makes women cringe

[pegkerr]

I found this article to be fascinating:

Ladies, what's with the lexical disgust over the M-word?

misia, if you're still dropping in occasionally on LJ, I'd LOVE to hear what you have to say about this.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

It's unexpected to me, and sounds bizarre. I wonder if it's generational or something; but I interact with considerably younger people a lot online and some in the real world, and haven't noticed a problem. Then again I'm not sure the word has come up outside the context of food very often.

Or if it's a clever prank, or a random glitch that hit the right writers to hit the net, or something.

[post-ecdysis.livejournal.com]

IANAL, but I think Slate is off the mark here. I have noticed the "moist" aversion in many women, and they are as likely to be devotees of cheap porn as crusaders against it. More than a few men as well, including me.

My theory is that it is an "uncomfortable" word to say phonetically, starting with your lips together, then one of those two-stage vowel sounds, and concluding with a hard "t" that you have to clearly enunciate, and all in a single syllable. You have to slow down in order to pronounce it clearly, and when I watch myself saying it in the mirror I notice that my lips are moving more in that one word than the rest of the sentence put together.

If you want to get psychoanalytical about it, in that moment of slowing down I've always thought about Liberace and whether I am deliberately using an effeminate affectation to say the word, and that momentary discomfort may subconsciously come across in my eyes and voice. But not panties -- for heaven's sake, moistness makes me think exclusively of yummy cake.

[cedarlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Oh WOW. I thought I was the only person on earth who threw up in my mouth a little every time I heard that word. It's always instilled feelings of discomfort in me. Porn or no porn, it makes me think of disgustingly humid summer days.

I have to stop typing now.

[laurel]

Huh. Interesting.

I've pretty much always hated the word "moist" just because of the way it sounds, has nothing to do with anything else (given I disliked it before it would've occurred to me that it had anything to do with women or sex, I don't think there's anything subliminal going on there).

I wouldn't boycott the word or anything, but it's just not a word I like.

[pameladean]

How bizarre. It's a perfectly neutral word, to me.

P.

[crowley.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one! I've always disliked the word "moist" for reasons I can't quite explain (and certainly not for the reaons Slate seems to think).

[gwendolyngrace.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of that until "Dead Like Me" when in the pilot we're told that Joy thinks the word "moist" is pornographic.

I have no problem with it.

[tesla-aldrich.livejournal.com]

Odd. I have no aversion to it.

"Clammy," on the other hand, makes me vaguely uncomfortable.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

I have friends with major issues with it, but it's never bothered me.

My father, on the other hand, is very much bothered by the word 'snot'. Always has been, always will be. No known reason. Oh well. :)

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

Isn't moist like the highest compliment that you can pay to a cake?

No real aversion here, although I object to being called 'moist' when someone really means "sweating like a pig."

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

I used to not like the word "moist" and my ex really did like to say it an awful lot.

But Terry Pratchett has redeemed the word Moist for me.

Although, now I think it's a name.

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

Within a short period of time I had both read Terry Pratchett's Going Postal, with a lead character by the name of "Moist" and also started watching Dead Like Me, in which the lead character's mother has an issue with the word "moist". I thought the writers of DLM were just trying to find a random word that could sound offensive to someone; I had no idea anyone else felt that way about it, since it never occurred to me to have a problem with it myself. (I like certain foods to be "moist", for instance, and if I couldn't say the word I couldn't have those foods the way I like them.) Now I wonder whether Pratchett is familiar with other people thinking the word is icky and decided to see how many of them he could repel by giving a character that name. ;)

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Same here.

K.

[satakieli.livejournal.com]

I considered the word completely neutral before I took Spark.com's "gender test", which seemed to explicitly suggest that women found the word repellent. After a couple of years, I noticed I was a little squicked out by the word, and laughed at myself and blamed Spark. I excuse myself from the ridicule involved in taking the test at all because this was nearly ten years ago, and the fact that it was nearly ten years ago leads me to wonder whether it was the source (or a source) of this mania.

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

I feel rather indignant on behalf of the poor word now. Specially as I do like my brownies moist, and I am a big fan of skin moisturizers ...