Say 'Moist." Ugh!
Watching the Today show this morning (I confess), the anchors were talking about words that people have an aversion to. Yeah, right, I thought. But when they started listing them, maybe they're not so wrong. Topping the list? You guessed it. Moist. Then came pus. Fudge. Loaf. Yeast. Poop. And Willy Geist's uncle's absolutely detests "cheeses." People just get crawly when they hear these words, for some reason. Kyrie O'Connor says some people actually have visceral reactions to certain words, "moist" being the leading contender. She writes, "The phenomenon of word aversion—seemingly pedestrian, inoffensive words driving some people up the wall—has garnered increasing attention over the past decade or so." He adds that, in a recent post on Language Log, University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman "defined the concept as 'a feeling of intense, irrational distaste for the sound or sight of a particular...