Why Do We Hate Certain Words?

The George Saunders story ?Escape From Spiderhead,? included in his much praised new book Tenth of December, is not for the squeamish or the faint of heart. The sprawling, futuristic tale delves into several potentially unnerving topics: suicide, sex, psychotropic drugs. It includes graphic scenes of self-mutilation. It employs the phrases ?butt-squirm,? ?placental blood,? and ?thrusting penis.? At one point, Saunders relates a conversation between two characters about the application of medicinal cream to raw, chafed genitals.

Early in the story, there is a brief passage in which the narrator, describing a moment of postcoital amorousness, says, ?Everything seemed moist, permeable, sayable.? This sentence doesn?t really stand out from the rest?in fact, it?s one of the less conspicuous sentences in the story. But during a recent reading of ?Escape From Spiderhead? in Austin, Texas, Saunders says he encountered something unexpected. ?I?d texted a cousin of mine who was coming with her kids (one of whom is in high school) just to let her know there was some rough language,? he recalls. ?Afterwards she said she didn?t mind fu*k, but hated?wait for it?moist. Said it made her a little physically ill. Then I went on to Jackson, read there, and my sister Jane was in the audience?and had the same reaction. To moist.?

Mr. Saunders, say hello to word aversion.

It?s about to get really moist in here. But first, some background is in order. 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. 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 word or phrase, not because its use is regarded as etymologically or logically or grammatically wrong, nor because it?s felt to be over-used or redundant or trendy or non-standard, but simply because the word itself somehow feels unpleasant or even disgusting.?

So we?re not talking about hating how some people say laxadaisical instead of lackadaisical or wanting to vigorously shake teenagers who can?t avoid using the word like between every other word of a sentence. If you can?t stand the word tax because you dislike paying taxes, that?s something else, too. (When recently asked about whether he harbored any word aversions, Harvard University cognition and education professor Howard Gardner offered up webinar, noting that these events take too much time to set up, often lack the requisite organization, and usually result in ?a singularly unpleasant experience.? All true, of course, but that sort of antipathy is not what word aversion is all about.)

Word aversion is marked by strong reactions triggered by the sound, sight, and sometimes even the thought of certain words, according to Liberman. ?Not to the things that they refer to, but to the word itself,? he adds. ?The feelings involved seem to be something like disgust.? ?

Participants on various message boards and online forums have noted serious aversions to, for instance, squab, cornucopia, panties, navel, brainchild, crud, slacks, crevice, and fudge, among numerous others. Ointment, one Language Log reader noted in 2007, ?has the same mouth-feel as moist, yet it?s somehow worse.? In response to a 2009 post on the subject by Ben Zimmer, one commenter confided: ?The word meal makes me wince. Doubly so when paired with hot.? (Nineteen comments later, someone agreed, declaring: ?Meal is a repulsive word.?) In many cases, real-life word aversions seem no less bizarre than when the words mattress and tin induce freak-outs on Monty Python?s Flying Circus. (The Monty Python crew knew a thing or two about annoying sounds.)

Jason Riggle, a professor in the department of linguistics at the University of Chicago, says word aversions are similar to phobias. ?If there is a single central hallmark to this, it?s probably that it?s a more visceral response,? he says. ?The [words] evoke nausea and disgust rather than, say, annoyance or moral outrage. And the disgust response is triggered because the word evokes a highly specific and somewhat unusual association with imagery or a scenario that people would typically find disgusting?but don?t typically associate with the word.? These aversions, Riggle adds, don?t seem to be elicited solely by specific letter combinations or word characteristics. ?If we collected enough of [these words], it might be the case that the words that fall in this category have some properties in common,? he says. ?But it?s not the case that words with those properties in common always fall in the category.? ???

So back to moist. If pop cultural references, Internet blog posts, and social media are any indication, moist reigns supreme in its capacity to disgust a great many of us. Aversion to the word has popped up on How I Met Your Mother and Dead Like Me. VH1 declared that using the word moist is enough to make a man ?undateable.? In December, Huffington Post?s food section published a piece suggesting five alternatives to the word moist so the site could avoid its usage when writing about various cakes. Readers of The New Yorker flocked to Facebook and Twitter to choose moist as the one word they would most like to be eliminated from the English language. In a survey of 75 Mississippi State University students from 2009, moist placed second only to vomit as the ugliest word in the English language. In a 2011 follow-up survey of 125 students, moist pulled into the ugly-word lead?vanquishing a greatest hits of gross that included phlegm, ooze, mucus, puke, scab, and pus. Meanwhile, there are 7,903 people on Facebook who like the ?interest? known as ?I Hate the Word Moist.? (More than 5,000 other Facebook users give the thumbs up to three different moist-hatred Facebook pages.)

Being grossed out by the word moist is not beyond comprehension. It?s squishy-seeming, and, to some, specifically evocative of genital regions and undergarments. These qualities are not unusual when it comes to word aversion. Many hated words refer to ?slimy things, or gross things, or names for garments worn in potentially sexual areas, or anything to do with food, or suckling, or sexual overtones,? says Riggle. But other averted words are more confounding, notes Liberman. ?There is a list of words that seem to have sexual connotations that are among the words that elicit this kind of reaction?moist being an obvious one,? he says. ?But there are other words like luggage, and pugilist, and hardscrabble, and goose pimple, and squab, and so on, which I guess you could imagine phonic associations between those words and something sexual, but it certainly doesn?t seem obvious.?

So then the question becomes: What is it about certain words that makes certain people want to hurl?

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=dc61baaf902fc9393b9c41b64507a693

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