科学告诉你为什么人们听到“潮湿”这个词会有些反感 Science Of Why People Hate The Word 'Moist'

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"Moist" is one of the 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. Moist. Moist. Moist. Moist. 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 percent reported that moist gave them the same reaction as fingernails on a chalk board. 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, what, that's just, ew, 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 are people overreacting?

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