I’m on the road this weekend, attending an annual family golf outing. And as I was driving to New England, the ugliness of the traffic reminded me of this topic.
Words can be ugly. Not only in their meaning, but simply in their sound.
Words like regurgitate, crepuscular, fetid, scab, chunk, or what is perhaps considered the ugliest word of them all: the dreaded moist.
But it goes beyond the mere sound of them; there’s a phenomenon known as word aversion that has a scientific basis.
It means that there are words that have a seemingly innocuous meaning — like crevice or curdle — that when you hear them, have the unique power to disgust people.
And moist stands out among these.
When rhyming words such as foist, hoist, or joist were shown to study participants, they weren’t similarly repelled.
Also, when moist was used to describe something like a cake, it wasn’t perceived as offensive or disgusting.
Only when associated bodily functions does it rise to the level of aversion.
Such words have the same kind of power as synesthesia, the blending of senses in which an aural phenomenon, such as a musical note, can trigger a visual or even an emotional response
This has placed it into the same category as other less than attractive words such as pus, vomit, and phlegm.
Sorry.
Hope you’re not trying to enjoy a piece of moist cake while reading this.
There’s so much to learn,