More on "moist"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>
>> Just heard on NPR's quiz show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!" which I find
>> _highly_ offensive for its unfunniness, that users of FaceBook have declared
>> the word "moist" to be the most unpleasant word in English (or on FaceBook -
>> sorry I didn't hear the entire thing).
>>
>> The show then quoted a linguist (one of us?) who suggested that
>> the perceived putridity may come from the "oi" diphthong. Why a humble
>> diphthong should be considered offensive went unexplored.
>>
>> I suspect anti-Brooklyn/Bowery Boy bigotry in representations of NYC
>> speech.  Am very offended by all of it.
>
> Well, Mark Peters recently quoted me about the "oi" of "moist" (and
> "ointment", "goiter", etc.) in his column for Good:
>
> http://www.good.is/post/why-do-we-hate-the-word-%E2%80%9Cmoist%E2%80%9D/
> quoting:
> http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/1857/
>
> No offense to Brooklynites intended, of course! Nor to residents of
> Des Moines, Detroit, Boise, and Hanoi.

Yep, sure enough, they quoted Mark and me on this. Audio here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111681597

Thanks for the tip, JL.

--Ben Zimmer

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