The m-word

[Laurence Urdang]

It is increasingly difficult  finding a TV program in which the main competition isn't something like projectile vomiting; but if one watches things like the Last Comic Standing and listens to what passes these days for humor, if is not hard to see why.
  L. Urdang
  Old Lyme

Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Jonathan Lighter
Subject: Re: The m-word
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Charlie, you'll have noticed the current TV commercials that feature

A. a bouncing balloon filled with urine, and

B. giant anthropomorphic mucus.

Market researchers seem to have determined that these images are very appealing to today's prime demographic. They'll move products. (Or "product," as products are so often called on TV.)

JL

Charles Doyle wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: The m-word
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You'd think that "misty" and "moisty" might be distantly cognate, but evidently they aren't. "Mist" seems to go back to an IU root meaning "urinate" (cf. "micturate"), whereas "moist" comes from L "mucus"! Pokorny's note on the root "meug-" is interesting: 'slimy, slippery; with derivatives referring to various wet or slimy substances and conditions'; possible derivatives include OE "smok" ('smock'), MHG "smuck" ('clothing', from whence "Schmuck" 'jewel'!) and the Greek-derived "-mycin" words, having to do with fungus or mold.

I'm starting to think the word "moist" IS disgusting--and "misty" too!

Just to clarify: My student and her sisters were not being outraged at my use of the word--rather amused that I should be so clueless as not to recognize the indelicacy of it.

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:35:51 -0400
>From: Kate Daly
>
>As in the old nursery rhyme "One misty moisty morning"?
>
>And btw - speaking as a woman, and a feminist from way back at that, the idea of "moist" being offensive sounds pretty silly to me. I think the original poster's student was making snowballs for other people to throw.
>-Kate

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