More on "moist"

[Tom Zurinskas]

The "oi" is an "icky" phoneme?  Just like what little girls think of little "boys" ~boiz I guess.

The very first werd in the audio clip is "support".  I believe I heard sue-PORT ~suepport.  I can't recall hearing that word with a long u as in "super" before.

Good to hear audio here.


Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
see truespel.com phonetic spelling


>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
> Subject: Re: More on "moist"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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