Moist

Moist (pronounced moyst)

(1) Moderately or slightly wet; damp.

(2) Tearful.

(3) Accompanied by or connected with liquid or moisture.

(4) Prevailing high humidity.

(5) In informal (though not infrequent) use (1), of the vagina: sexually lubricated due to sexual arousal & (2) of a woman: sexually aroused, turned on.

(6) In medicine, characterized by the presence of some fluid such as mucus, pus etc; of sounds of internal organs (especially as heard through a stethoscope): characterized by the sound of air bubbling through a fluid.

(7) Historically, in science (including alchemy), pertaining to one of the four essential qualities formerly believed to be present in all things, characterized by wetness; also, having a significant amount of this quality.

1325-1375:  From the Middle English moist & moiste which has the senses of (1) damp, humid, moist, wet, (2) well-irrigated, well-watered, (3) made up of water or other fluids, fluid, (4) figuratively) (of ale), fresh, (5) carnal, lascivious; undisciplined, weak & (6) in alchemy, medicine, physics: dominated by water as an element.  It was from the Anglo-Norman moist, moiste & moste, from the Middle French moiste and the Old French moiste (damp, wet, soaked) & muste (damp, moist, wet (which endures in the thirteenth century modern French moite, perhaps from the Vulgar Latin muscidus (moldy) & mūcidus (slimy, moldy, musty), from mucus (slime).  Doubts have always surrounded the alternative etymology which suggested a link with the Latin musteus (fresh, green, new (literally “like new wine" from mustum (unfermented or partially fermented grape juice or wine, must).  The noun was derived from the adjective.  The noun moisture (diffused and perceptible wetness) dates from the mid-fourteenth century, from the Old French moistour (moisture, dampness, wetness (which endures in the thirteenth century modern French moiteur), from moiste.  The verb moisten (make moist or damp) emerged in the 1570s, from moist, which until the mid-fourteenth century was used as a verb.  Moist is a noun, adjective & (mostly obsolete) verb, moisten is a verb, moistened & moisty are adjectives, moistener is a noun and moistly an adverb; the verb moistify is classified as a jocular creation of Scottish origin.

Making moist look good: Lindsay Lohan, hot and damp in white bikini at the swimming pool, Los Angeles, 2009.

In general use it was from the fourteenth century applied to the tearful or eyes wet with tears, due either to crying, illness or old age; since the mid-twentieth century use in this context has increasing been restricted to literature or poetry, probably because of the influence of the increased lining of the word with the bodily fluids associated with sexual arousal.  As a poetic device, between the fourteen and eighteenth centuries, moist (sometimes as “the coming moist”), was used to suggest impending rain and a gathering storm was “the moist”.  Some older usage guides suggested moist was mostly used for agreeable or neutral conditions (moist chocolate cake; moist garden) while damp was applied to something undesirable (damp clothes; damp carpet) but this seems dated, given the current feelings of linguistic disapprobation.  The synonyms depend for meaning on context and can include (of the eyes) dewy-eyed, misty, teary, weepy, wet, (of the weather) damp, muggy, humid, rainy, & (of the built environment) wet & dank.

The language’s most hated word.

Moist appears to be the most disliked word in the English language.  In 2012 The New Yorker asked its readers to nominate a word to scrub from the English language and an overwhelming consensus emerged to ditch "moist".  Even in surveys where it doesn’t top the disgust list, moist seems always to score high (or low depending on one’s view) and most of the words with which it competes have about them some quality of moistness including pus (a white to yellowish liquid formed on the site of a wound or infection), phlegm (a liquid secreted by mucous membranes), seepage (the slow escape of a liquid or gas through small holes or porous material), splooge (an abrupt discharge of fluid, fester (of a wound or sore that becomes septic; suppurate), mucus (a slippery secretion produced by and covered by mucous membranes), ooze (fluid slowly trickle or seep out of something), putrid (organic matter decaying or rotting and emitting a fetid smell) & curd (a dairy product obtained by curdling milk (or soy).  Others have conducted similar surveys and found other words which attracted little fondness (not all of which literally involved any sort of wetness but had a spelling or pronunciation which seemed to hint at moistness) included festering, lugubrious, smear, squirt, gurgle, fecund, pulp and viscous.  Surprisingly perhaps, "rural" often rates a high disapprobation count, perhaps reflecting the urban bias of surveys (something presumably true of The New Yorker's erudite readership).  

Practitioners of structural linguistics provided another layer of interest, noting some correlation between the offending words and their use of the "phonetically abrasive" letters (“b”, “g”, “m”, “u” & “o”).  That would seem tom make “gumbo” at least a linguistic micro-aggression but it deserves to be defended.  Gumbo is a soup or stew (depending on how it’s prepared) especially popular in Louisiana and made with an intense stock, meat or shellfish, a thickener (historically always okra), and the so-called “holy trinity” of celery, bell peppers and onions; it’s said to be delicious.  The origin of the use of the word gumbo to describe the dish is uncertain but it was first recorded in 1805 as a part of Louisiana French and etymologists conclude it was probably from the Central Bantu dialect.  In the associative way such things work, Gumbo was used also of the creole patois of Louisiana; that use dating from 1838.  A patois is one of the layers of language and while a creole is recognized as a stand-alone language, a patois is considered a variation of a “real” language.  It’s a highly technical aspect of structural linguistics and the mechanics of differentiation used by linguists to distinguish between creoles, patois, and pidgins (many of which remain permanently in flux) are intricate and understood by few, the rules (about which not all agree) including arcane discussions about the situations in which patois is properly capitalized and those in which it’s not.  Less controversial is the use of gumbo in hydrology where it’s used of “fine, silty soils which when wet becomes very thick and heavy” (a use obviously redolent with moistness and thus likely to elicit disgust from delicate types).  For those who wish further to be disgusted, a usually reliable source (Urban Dictionary) has several pages of real-world definitions of gumbo, many of which rate high on the moistness index.   

Researchers from Oberlin College in Ohio and Trinity University in San Antonio ran three different experiments to figure out how many people hate the word "moist" and work out why.  They found more than one person in five loathed moist and it seems people associate it with bodily functions, whether they realize it or not.  The researchers said their subjects’ responses were typified by an answer such as “It just has an ugly sound that makes whatever you’re talking about sound gross”.  The younger (or more neurotic) the study participants were, the more likely they were to dislike the word and the more disgust bodily functions provoked, the less they liked moist.  Still, although the researchers didn’t try to prove it, it’s doubtful many would have declined a slice of a nice, moist chocolate cake.

Moist dark chocolate cake

Using dark chocolate makes for the ultimate moist chocolate cake and it’s ideal to serve with brandy infused cream.  The preparation time is between 30-40 minutes, cooking takes 60-90 minutes and it’s ready to serve as soon as cooled.  This recipe will yield a cake of 12-14 slices.

Ingredients (chocolate cake)

200 g dark chocolate (about 60-75% cocoa solids), chopped
200 g butter, cubed
1 tablespoon instant coffee granules
85 g self-raising flour
85 g plain flour
¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
200 g light muscovado sugar
200 g golden caster sugar
25 g cocoa powder
3 medium eggs
75 ml buttermilk
50 g grated chocolate or 100 g curls, to decorate

Ingredients (ganache)

200 g dark chocolate (about 60% cocoa solids), chopped
300 ml double cream
2 tablespoons golden caster sugar

Instructions

(1) Heat oven to 160C (fan-forced) / 140C (gas level 3).  Butter and line a 300 mm round (75 mm deep) cake tin.

(2) Put 200g chopped dark chocolate in medium pan with 200g butter.

(3) Mix 1 tablespoon instant coffee granules into 125 ml cold water and pour into pan.

(4) Warm over a low heat just until everything is melted (DO NOT overheat). Alternatively, melt in microwave (should take 3-5 minutes), stirring after 2 minutes.

(5) Mix 85 g self-rising flour, 85 g plain flour, ¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, 200 g light muscovado sugar, 200 g golden caster sugar and 25 g cocoa powder; squash mix until lump-free.

(6) Beat 3 medium eggs with 75 ml buttermilk.

(7) Pour melted chocolate mixture and egg mixture into the flour mixture and stir everything to a smooth (quite runny) consistency.

(8) Pour this into tin and bake for 85-90 minutes.  To test, push a skewer into the centre and (1) it should come out clean and (2) the top should feel firm (surface cracking is normal and indicates perfectly cooked).

(9) Leave to cool in tin (during this, it will likely dip a little), then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Cut cold cake horizontally into three.

(10) To make the ganache, put 200 g chopped dark chocolate in a bowl. Pour 300 ml double cream into a pan, add 2 tablespoons golden caster sugar and heat until mix is at the point of boiling.

(11) Immediately remove mix from heat and pour it over the chocolate.  Stir until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth.  Cool until it becomes a little cooler but remains pourable.

(12) Sandwich the layers together with just a little of the ganache. Pour the rest over the cake letting it fall down the sides; smooth over any gaps with a palette knife.

(13) Decorate with 50 g grated chocolate or 100 g chocolate curls. The cake will keep “moist and gooey” for 3-4 days.