What's the Deal with 'Moist'?

I was just watching one of Seth Meyers’ “A Closer Look” segments, and he got a little squirrely about the word “moist.” A good friend of mine can’t stand the word, says it give her the willies.

Now come on, people, it’s just a word.

My wife hates “quag,” a word I truly love. As in, Look at all the quag hanging out of that dog’s mouth.

Nobody likes the word “vomit” either, though it’s a perfectly fine word if you happen to be doing it. Nor do people appreciate anyone saying “phlegm,” which I get. I’ll give you that one.

Apparently people don’t like the word maggot. It’s a wonderful word to call someone you hate, though. Consider this clip from Edge of Tomorrow.

And people seem to, if not hate, at least dislike the words mucus, pustule, and bulbous. Odd.

It might just be my training and experience as a nurse, but I love medical words. Pustule. Awesome. Drag it out a bit, like PUSSss-tchooool. Balances lovingly on the tongue. Bulbous is almost comical; makes me giggle.

I love to say smegma. Say it like this and you’ll like it too: sssMEG-muhhhh. Hold out that last syllable, and then tell me you don’t want to snicker.

But moist? What’s the deal with that word? Well, psychologist Paul Thibodeau wrote an article in Behavioral Scientist in 2016 about a study he conducted that tried to explain it. “On average,” he wrote, “about 18 percent of our participants identified as categorically averse to the word. Women, younger people, and those with more education, who tended to score higher on measures of disgust toward bodily function and neuroticism (a personality trait characterized by increased feelings of anxiety, worry, anger and guilt), were particularly likely to find the word unpleasant.”

It seems as if culture gets all tied up in those kinds of words, though it’s unclear why. For me, as soon as someone tells me that they hate the word, oooh, I just want to say it over and over.

Moist.

Moist.

Mmmmm-ooyy-ssssttt.

Yum!