Why MOIST Is The Worst Word Ever
Experience: 4 yearsJyotsana Rao is an engineering graduate from NIT, Nagpur, who discovered her love for writing during her undergraduate days. She is passionate about writing about everything related to beauty - makeup... read full bio
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You might be wondering, “What is wrong with this word?”
We have been using this word since so long, then why is everyone thinking of it as GROSS all of a sudden? What is it that is making the word so cringeworthy? Why is this word considered the worst in the history of the English language?
Well, there’s a science behind it!
Researchers from Trinity University and Oberlin College researched on why some words make us want to vomit and named the study as, “An Exploratory Investigation of Word Aversion.”
“The results of three experiments represent a novel exploratory effort to better understand the cognitive underpinnings of word aversion. Our results suggest that as many as 20% of the population may be averse to “moist” and that such an aversion is related to age, neuroticism, and a particular kind of disgust to bodily functions (and not phonological features of the word).
This work reveals that averse words may be similar to well-studied lexical categories like taboo and disgusting words. Our findings contribute to a growing literature on the processing of highly valenced and arousing words.”
A few people feel that the word “moist” makes their skin crawl because the first thing that comes to their minds after listening to it is the association between our genital areas and the desserts that are moist and we love to eat.
Do you feel the same when you hear the word “moist”? If yes, then rather than thinking of it as gross, imagine a freshly baked cake!
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