The m-word

[Wilson Gray]

My wife suggests that the women be asked about "hot," after I
mentioned to her that,  in my lost youth, "hot," when applied to  a
woman, meant that she had the female equivalent of a boner, i.e. was
sexually aroused to the point of being moist and ready for sexual
intercourse, or was infected with gonorrhea. It had nothing whatsoever
to do with physical attractiveness.

-Wilson

On 10/25/07, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      The m-word
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>
> A student in my Shakespeare class announced that the word "moist" (which I had uttered to describe Egypt in _Antony & Cleopatra_) is offensive to women. Some of the other women in the class concurred (not hostilely--just as a matter of information for a clueless male professor). I was somewhat flabergasted, and nobody would articulate a reason for the offensiveness--except for one male student's eventual suggestion that the word reminds women of sexual arousal. That association is not at all beside-the-point of my description of Egypt in the play--but why would such a connotation make the word offensive per se? As far as I could ascertain, "damp" and "wet" don't carry whatever stigma attaches to "moist." What am I missing here?!
>
> --Charlie
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