moist is one of few words in the English
language with the power to make your
skin crawl and it makes sense the word
sounds kind of disgusting but scientists
have discovered that the way it sounds
isn't the biggest problem moist is part
of a phenomenon known as word aversion
it refers to words with an inoffensive
meaning yet when you hear them like
crevice and phlegm they have the unique
power to disgust people but there's one
word we find most disgusting of all
moist moist in 2012 for example Twitter
users voted on the word that should be
eliminated from the English language
completely out of more than a quarter
million words in the English language
moist was the clear winner or loser in
this case in another experiment that
pulled 400 people 20% reported that
moist gave them the same reaction as
fingernails on a chalkboard
however sound is just part of the
problem in fact when those same people
reported how they felt about similar
sounding words like hoist and foist they
didn't have the same negative reaction
and even when the offending word was
provided in context with food like a
moist cake it still didn't have the same
gut wrenching effect
turns out the real reason we may hate
moist so much is because it conjures up
thoughts of wet bodily functions wait
but that's just Oh
ooh that's gross let's just leave it at
that
despite our disgust for the word moist
is somewhat of a celebrity we've been
steadily googling it more often since
2004 and maybe moist bad rep is just a
fad like fidget spinners or rainbow
bagels
so does moist make you cringe or people
overreacting let us know in the comments
below
[Music]