Why some words like moist just don’t sound right

Word of choice is quite essential. Each word conveys more than just meaning. Choosing colorful words will make your writing stand out from others. You will notice the difference by selecting words that have evocativeness. This blog post will convince you if you think otherwise. 

A lot of people feel uncomfortable while hearing some words or specific combinations of words. When you pronounce those words in front of people, they might feel unwell and sick by hearing the sound of it. 

A cognitive psychologist, Paul Thibideau, showed in his research that why people hate the ‘moist.’ He stated in his study that,

• The participants hate the word ‘moist’ because of its sound.
• The participants hate the word ‘moist’ because of its implications for bodily fluids.
• The participants hate the word ‘moist’ because they meet other people to believe that the word is disgusting.

Apart from the moist word, he tested the participants with similar words like ‘joist’ and ‘hoist,’ but this doesn’t affect the participants. This issue is broadly known as ‘Word Aversion.’ ‘Word Aversion’ means the distaste and dislike for the sound of some words. 

This also happens with accents where some pronunciation of words can make people uncomfortable and unpleasing when they heard some particular word. Many words make people feel strong aversion like:

• Ointment
• Panties
• Curd
• Rural
• Dollop
• Slurp
• Pulp
• Squirt
• Viscous
• Vomit
• Yolk

These are a few similarly disliked words, just like the word ‘moist.’ The fact is, the combination of words creates bodily fluids in people like if moist is used with pleasant, it doesn’t sound appealing to the people. But when moist is used with cake, it doesn’t sound awkward to the people and doesn’t affect them. Therefore, you should choose wisely and make your writing stand out from the bunch.