WEBVTT - Word Aversion: The Story of Moist 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to blow your mind from How Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:15.240 Works dot Com. Ladies and gentlemen, I am Julie Douglas, 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:17.279 and not with me today is Mr Lamb, who is 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:21.120 out of the country instead. One very brave soul joins 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:25.759 us today, the one the only Alison voice like Silk 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.600 Louder Milk. Thanks Julie. It's a pleasure to be here. 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:31.880 I haven't been in the studio and quite some time, 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.160 and I'm glad to be back to be discussing word 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:37.640 a version. I know we're gonna get into this in 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:40.800 a moment um. This is all your fault this episode today. 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:42.800 By the way, you want to explain how it came about, 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:46.000 and I do, I do um? Actually, do you think 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:49.280 you could take us back to one day in July? 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:51.440 It was like ten o'clock in the morning. There was 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.080 a fire drill here at How Stuff Works. We were 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:56.840 all congregated in the parking lot. I can't take it 0:00:56.880 --> 0:00:59.120 from there, so yes, we were congregated in the parking 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:01.760 lot in Georgia. You know, it can be quite a 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:05.000 warm place in the summertime, and it can also have 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:08.280 a fair amount of moisture. So I do believe I 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:11.920 made the comment that it was feeling a little moist outside, 0:01:12.480 --> 0:01:15.120 and Julie of course gave me this look because she 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:17.920 has that aversion to the word moist, which I do not. 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:20.679 And I am one of those people who enjoys tormenting 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:24.199 people with the word moist clearly because as I said, 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:25.880 it was ten o'clock in the morning, and I said 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:28.759 to you, it's not even noon. It's like drinking before noon. 0:01:29.040 --> 0:01:31.679 It was, it was, And so we had this whole 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:35.360 conversation of like, oh, why do we have word a version? 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:37.600 What's it all about? And what's going on in your 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:40.160 brain when you have this word of version? What was 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:41.800 going on in your brain? Like what did you think 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:45.319 when I said that? I thought about the groin area 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:48.800 and I don't like to say groin either, that's that 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:53.720 oi oi. I thought about just just this unpleasant sort 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:57.280 of you know, mustiness. And this is all out of 0:01:57.320 --> 0:01:59.520 the context of food. By the way, if if someone 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.280 is saying that something is you know, there's this cake 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:07.279 and it's moist and redlent um of you know, fruit 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:14.320 trees in may totally because you're reframing. Reframing, that's the key. 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:16.919 That's the keys We're going to find out here. So 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:19.480 it turns out though I'm not alone with this whole 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:23.720 moist thing. No, no, you're not, definitely not. So there 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:26.720 was a two thousand twelve Uffington Post entry that I 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.000 happened to come across and perhaps some of you saw 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:30.840 as well, and they were trying to come up with 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:33.880 synonyms for moist, and I actually I did like some 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:36.960 of them. My particular favorite was good crumb. Did she 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:39.959 catch that? I did see that? Like I kind of Again, 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:41.600 I'm gonna say it had a little bit of a 0:02:41.600 --> 0:02:44.520 weird association, almost like hey, she gives good chrome, you know. 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:46.960 And this was in the context of food writing, right, 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:48.960 Like they were like, hey, as food writers, we have 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:51.960 to write about moist all the time. What words can 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:55.880 we put in there? So good chrome was one of them. Sure, spongy, 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:59.400 which I think is fairly descriptive, and a plastic cake 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:01.040 I would I would of spongey in the in the 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:04.960 realm of cake. And also hydrated, hydrated not dry a 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:08.600 little scientific yeah, yeah, hydrated is good, um, because it 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:10.480 was like, yeah, that's a hydrated piece of cake. I 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:12.520 just ate. And then not dry was another one. But 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:13.840 then I thought, you know what these are all sort 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:15.920 of paltry. I don't know that there actually would be 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:20.519 a stand in for moist when it comes to culinary writing. Yeah, 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:23.560 I think moist works well, and thus it's prevalence to 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:28.480 describe cake of all sorts. Nonetheless, moist just continues to 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:32.280 rise as this word that is much maligned. And I 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:34.400 wanted to point out that The New York Or had 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:36.880 a blog post called words came in Marked for Death. 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:40.480 And this was a Twitter game show that they started 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:44.160 called Questioning Lee and when the first installments was, hey, 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:46.080 if you were going to remove a word from the 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:50.040 English language, which one would it be? And again moist 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:52.880 got marked for death. Yeah. I also heard that slacks 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:56.240 came in pretty high on that list. Slacks, yes, I 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.640 might have nominated dungarees myself. Oh, dungarees. I think that's 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:01.960 kind of quaint, though I do. I think it's kind 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:04.680 of quaint, but it's also for me. Slacks and dungarees, 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:07.960 I kind of they're interchangeable. I saw trousers on one 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:10.600 list as well. I like trousers. Trouser has an elegant 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:12.840 connotation for me. How yeah, the same thing, And I 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:14.760 think that's what it all boils down to, is that 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:16.520 for me, that seems kind of like a fancy word 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:20.160 for pants. And everybody has their own, you know, idiosyncrasies 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:22.600 when it comes to these likes and dislikes of words. 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:25.400 And I was thinking about this too. It even probably 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:28.240 comes up in your profession. So if you're a teacher, 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:30.960 probably one of the most maligned words for you is 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.480 the word like. Oh sure, absolutely. Did you read the 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:38.120 Vanity Fair post in which Christopher Hitchins railed against the 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.760 usage of like as a placeholder and just it's craziness 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:43.599 in the English language. I mean I even hear it 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.520 out of my my daughter. Yeah. So it's all well 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:48.800 and good that we have these grammatical pet peeves where 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:52.080 it's like your regardless, where it's such as like, which 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:55.400 we already discussed, but we're really talking about words that 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:57.720 you have a serious distaste for. And the folks at 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:00.479 the Language Log, which is an excellent blog run by 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:03.800 a bunch of linguists, um and in particular, there's a 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:06.480 gentleman by the name of Mark Liberman who has written 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.480 and commented and aggregated posts on the subject at length, 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:13.240 and he kind of has taken on the task of 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:17.040 defining word a version and it's really this physiological response. 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:19.960 I mean, doesn't make your skin crawl? Yeah it does, 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:21.920 And I think that's the mystery of it, Like how 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:26.280 could a word elicit a physical response and how could 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:29.599 you absorb that into your body like that? And that's 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:32.800 what's so fascinating. Yeah, so we really have to dig 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:36.279 into the juicy, and perhaps already in territory of associations, 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.680 we will. So you want to give that a start, 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:44.120 miss Julie. Well, before we dive into Freud and the unconscious, 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:46.400 maybe we should play a bit of this clip from 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:49.720 Monty Python that you sent me. That is wonderful and 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:52.359 oh oh that could be a word, that could be 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:53.880 a trigger word. We are going to be working in 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:56.960 these trigger words and awesome. People hate it, they did, 0:05:57.040 --> 0:05:59.400 but now it's so prevalent that people have begun to 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:01.680 adopt it as like, fine, this is a low level 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:06.400 world version today. Awesome. Awesome, Um, it's I think it's 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:08.599 in the realm of like you know, in terms of 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:12.320 pet Peeves. But this Monty Python clip in which there's 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:15.760 a kind of Downton Abbey like congregation of family in 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:20.640 a drawing room commenting on their pastoral, aristocratic life. Uh, 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:27.520 they begin to talk about certain words and recast and 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:32.479 and they talk about lovely woody words and dreadful tinny words. Tinny. 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:38.920 So let's have a listen there, gone, what's going? Yeah? 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.279 I think I think just like a word. It gives 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:47.840 me confidence. It's got a woody quality about it. School 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:58.719 much better than newspaper or little been peltly dreadful newspaper, 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:11.840 little been dreadful, titious worry. Al Right. So I love 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:14.920 that clip because it does kind of capture this whole 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.160 thing that we all have of words. And it goes 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:20.480 on and on, it gets even more ridiculous and great. 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:23.160 And they even bring up the word sausage. That's a 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:26.480 nice woody word. Yes, yes they do. You know what 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:28.280 it made me think of, Julie. It made me think, 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:30.720 if people have these word of versions and they're listening 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:34.120 to them with different accents, doesn't cause the same response. 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:36.400 I mean, would it be okay for you to hear 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:40.400 somebody say moist with an English accent as opposed to 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:45.960 just a flat out American English Southern accent. No? I 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:49.080 still yeah, even I think it might even be worse 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:52.560 if it is pronounced in a British accent. Okay, So 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:55.600 accents have no impact on this word of version for you. 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:59.320 And of course it's anecdotally anecdotal. And as will just 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:02.400 disc this word of version is not well studied. It 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:04.560 probably should because it would be fascinating to know if, 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:06.640 like a thousand years ago, if there are certain words 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:09.320 that you know, got on people's nerves and wine and 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:14.320 how contextual cultural that was. Research's our battering around some ideas, 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:16.160 and we'll get to that in a little bit. Yeah, 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.960 but first we gotta go into Freud and all things 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:22.360 that are sort of grizzly and awful. You have to 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:26.040 turn to Grandpa Freud here um. And when we talk 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:28.400 about Freud and unconscious, we're talking about the division of 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:32.480 the mind and psychoanalytic theory containing elements of psychic makeup. 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:37.360 We're talking about memories, repressed desires um, things that are 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:41.480 not consciously perceived by us or controlled, but they do 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:44.720 affect our conscious thoughts and how we behave in the world. 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:47.720 And so Freud, through all of the therapy that he 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:49.920 was doing with his patients, was trying to tease these 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:53.280 hidden mental processes from his patients through their dreams or 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:55.960 even word associations. And that's where it gets really interesting 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:58.760 when you start to look at language and words. And 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:02.439 I was even thinking about this in terms of embodied cognition, 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:06.600 those studies that talk about how if you have a 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:10.880 cup of warm coffee as opposed to a couple of 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:13.720 iced tea. When you have that warm coffee in your hand, 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:15.920 you're going to think more warm thoughts about the person 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:18.719 that you're talking to as opposed if you had that 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:22.400 iced coffee. Okay, So here's an example for you. Say 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:25.559 somebody were to serve you a slice of cake, and 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:28.400 on that plate that the cake was served on, there 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:32.400 was the word moist written on that plate indelibly. Fine, 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:36.719 really fine, it's the cake and then I know this 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:38.200 is not gonna be a dry cake, and I'm all 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.760 for it. But even if it was written on the plate, 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:45.160 that would not know, Okay, as long as there weren't 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:50.239 any strange, like, you know, depictions of groin areas accompanying 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:52.720 it depicted on the plate. I don't think they have 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:55.520 those kinds of there's not some sort of Greek you'ren 0:09:55.640 --> 0:10:00.600 somewhere with a piece of cake and groinage. But but ye, 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:03.480 they have done studies like that in which people who 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:05.960 are freaked out by rats they wrote the word rat 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:07.720 on a plate and then they put a piece of 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.760 food on it whatever they were giving the poor test subjects, 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:13.600 and the people did have an issue with eating the 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:16.080 food on the plate that had rat written on it. 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:17.720 So that was kind of interesting. So I was just 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:20.000 wondering if that might hold truth for you as well. Well. 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:21.439 If it said rat, I have to say, then I 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:24.000 would probably not be as keen to eat that piece 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:26.760 of cake. Yeah. And and this has come up before 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:28.439 in the podcast before too, like if you have a 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:31.800 chocolate cake and you write cloeaca on the top and 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:35.400 pretty cursive frosting, is someone going to eat it when 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:37.880 they know what a cloeaca is? I think maybe if 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:41.199 it were purple frosting, all right, So for you, purple 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:46.440 cloeaca fine. But I wanted to point out that David 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:49.800 Eagleman talks about this this suggestibility a lot in some 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:52.239 of his work. In fact, it's in his book Incognito, 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:54.760 and this question of free will is being part and 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:58.520 parcel of the conscious mind hanging out at the sidelines 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:01.680 while the unconscious, and he says, kind of does all 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:05.600 the heavy lifting for us, and ultimately it sort of 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:10.600 delivers that burp of consciousness that we perceive, which I 0:11:10.600 --> 0:11:12.400 think is really interesting because he says, you know, with 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:15.240 some things that we have those aha moments, that those 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:18.480 moments could have been in the works for weeks, months, 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:21.240 or even years, and that all this stuff is going 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.880 on under the cover of unconscious and so these word 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:29.040 of versions are manifestations of what you know, we find 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.000 delightful or disgusting in our lives, and so it would 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:35.840 stand to reason that words which also embody symbols would 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:39.480 come to represent ideas unconsciously for us. And then I 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:43.319 started to think about Young, who branched off from Freud, 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:47.080 and he had the whole collective unconscious thing going on, right, 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:49.559 So he's saying, yes, there's this deal about the unconscious 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:52.600 and all this hidden meaning, but collectively we all sort 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:56.000 of signed into this or signed onto this um system 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:59.040 of symbols. And so then I thought, well, that's really 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:03.760 interesting because that's perhaps how words like moist rise to 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.640 the top of our consciousness from the unconscious or the 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:11.280 collective unconsciousness, right, And our podcast isn't going to do 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:17.680 anything to help it. Now we're gonna continue to heat 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:24.079 up the flames under under moisture. There, that's an interesting analogy. Yeah, 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:28.600 now now I'm thinking about sweating buttocks. Sorry about that. So, Julie, 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:30.960 what do you think about bilingual and multilingual folks. Do 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:33.440 you think they have such word a versions? Well, I 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:37.400 know for a fact that they do have an emotional distance. 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:40.240 And I have talked about this before, but there's a 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:43.680 study in which participants were asked to assess a financial risk. 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:45.920 And now we already know that when it comes to 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:48.440 finances and trying to figure out what's a good choice 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:51.120 and a bad choice, that we're really messy thinkers about this. 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:55.480 And um, what they did, these participants they were asked 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:58.080 to think about this risk not in their mother tongue, 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:01.360 but in a second language that they were fluent him. 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:04.640 And the study is called the foreign language effect. Thinking 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:07.600 in a foreign tongue reduces decision biases, which I think 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:11.800 just gave away the results. Yeah, and the it was 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:14.319 a series of experiments more than three people from the 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:17.200 US and Korea. And what they found is that people 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:20.400 have two different modes of thoughts when they are trying 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:24.880 to process information and emotions, and one is really systematic 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:29.360 and analytical and cognitive intensive, and the other is fast, 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:33.160 unconscious and emotionally charged. And so what they found is 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:37.320 that when people were processing these risks in a second language, 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:41.439 they were not weighted with the emotion of the experience 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.800 of those words that might color their perception and the decisions. 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:48.800 So they made far more rational choices because they weren't 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:52.640 freighted with all of this uh emotion of language, and 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:55.360 it gave them that distance that they needed. And we 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.720 do tend to linger over negative emotions. And I think 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:00.679 that this is related to a word a version, and 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:03.360 that you think about these words really making you mad 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:07.080 or instilling some sort of feeling in you that is 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:11.240 not pleasant, and your brain kind of pauses longer over 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:16.199 the negativity. It's true because it turns out that we humans, 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:21.080 we remember far more negative words than positive ones. Yeah. 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.040 There's a study about emotion where it's correct. Yeah. Is 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:27.560 conducted by Dr Robert W. Schroff, He's the associate professor 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:30.880 of a POD Linguistics Penn State, and Julia Sanchez, a 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:34.680 graduate student psychology at the Chicago School of Psychology UM 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:38.320 and she they asked groups of people in Mexico City 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:40.520 in Chicago. This is important because they wanted to see 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:43.920 if there were any cultural differences in two age groups 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:47.440 twenty years old in sixty five years old to just 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:50.120 you know, list as many emotions as they could just 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:52.800 off the top of their head, and then those emotions 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:57.280 were categorized as negative, positive, or neutral. And it turns 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:01.080 out that people, um really did know many more of 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.240 these negative words and positive. We're talking about a proportion 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:10.360 of words that it's fifty percent negative, positive and neutral. Now, 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:12.960 in terms of differences between the age groups, it was 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:17.760 found that older folks had more of a diversity of words, 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:20.800 which makes sense because they have more life experience and 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:25.160 perhaps have dabbled in more word choices. But in terms 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:27.840 of proportion of negativity, it didn't matter what age you are. 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:31.600 You were still going to use or think of more 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:35.400 negative words. You know, depend no matter what your age was, 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:39.480 And it didn't matter if you were from Mexico or 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:44.080 excuse me, Mexico City or Chicago, you still again had 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:48.720 the memory available to you that was associated with negative words. 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:50.640 So I wonder if that's why we focus more on 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:54.080 word a version whether than word attraction. Do you have 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:59.400 attraction towards oh, I do, I do. I'm winking out 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:02.720 one of them, are it now? You know? It came 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:05.120 up and I was reading this over it was a 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:09.680 lot of people love the French word for grapefruit. Do 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:11.440 you happen to know it? I don't. What is it 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:16.240 forgive me? French speakers? Pump the moose? It's quite nice. 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:20.960 I think it sounds excellent, especially as compared with grapefruit. Well, yeah, 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:22.880 grapefruit is kind of heavy with the g right, and 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:25.080 we'll talk about that. It's one of those plosive words 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:28.880 and it does have impact, but it's not impactful. Just 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:32.760 for the record, impactful. I knew, I see, I knew, 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:34.480 I knew that would be on your list there. I 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.680 also hate impact as a verb, but that's a holy different, 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:40.880 that's a whole other ball. And you're an editor, so 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:42.600 by law, I think that you kind of have to. 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:44.360 So you would think that I would have a lot. 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:45.760 And I mean, you work with words all the time 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:49.240 as well, and I really don't have too many word 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:51.400 of versions. But again, I'm not quite ready to speak 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:54.440 to that. No, no, no, maybe maybe I'll save that 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:58.320 for the end. You mean, you're like centerpiece of word aversion. 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:01.040 The one word that gets you. So one word, all right, 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:02.520 we'll get to that. I think we all are going 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:05.800 to have to build up to this one. Yeah yeah. Um. 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:10.000 Let's talk about lists of aversion words and attraction words here. 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:14.080 A Mississippi State University survey found that among the student 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:17.159 population who submitted their least favorite words, these were the 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:19.639 ones that that rose to the top. And this is 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:24.520 in order of their level of hatred. Vomit, moist, puke, 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.320 phlagm in my nose right now, as you guys can 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:32.119 hear slaughter, snot ugly, damp, and mucus and then a 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:36.399 damp damp really yeah huh, I like damp, and I 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:40.280 like dank um oh, dank thank is a nice descriptor, right. 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:43.480 A two thousand and eleven follow up survey found moist 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:46.680 pulling into the number one slot, though, So it's really 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:49.120 a cultural phenomena, and that's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:53.000 that this is a zeitguys moment for moist in the world, 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:54.560 and it would be very interesting to see if it 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:56.720 takes a turn, because, as we know, language is ever 0:17:56.800 --> 0:17:59.719 evolving and and and takes on new meaning depending on 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:03.320 the sort of experiences that we have with it culturally. 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:06.000 So I have to share with you this product that 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:09.560 I found. I can't hold back anyone. So when I 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:12.359 was researching for the podcast, I came across a line 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:16.040 of skin care products and it was called Moist Diane. 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:22.040 And sometimes there is a comma inserted between moist and 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:24.960 Diane as if the more as if we were addressing 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:27.280 Diane directly. Sometimes the comma was taken out. So I 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:30.400 found this all very curious. Um it seemed to be 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:34.600 a line of beauty products from Japan, So I think 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.360 obviously that can cause some problems just as far as 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:43.159 naming products and then extending those product names to other languages, 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:46.439 and you know, what are the connotations here? That's really 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:49.199 tricky territory. Yeah, and we'll talk more about you know 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:53.159 how corporations use language to manipulate in a moment. But 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:56.160 you're right, there's like if you don't have the correct like, oh, 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:58.119 this is not a word that you want to necessarily 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:00.439 use with common then put someone's name that X to it, 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.520 then you just don't know that moist Diana right now 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:06.560 is making my tear ducks in my eye really active. 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:10.960 But alright, so those are some aversion words. Let's splip 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:14.920 over to the beautiful, that the attractive words. I don't 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:19.360 know why I'm talking like that. Let's luxuriate in these words. 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:24.040 According to Ben Zimmer, writing for Visual Source, the words 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:30.600 selected the most oftenest favorite is love. Oh really yeah? Okay, 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:33.399 but I thought, okay, that's that's sweet. We should have 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.359 more words for love. I agree, you know it should 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:37.960 be you know how there's the whole thing of like 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:41.520 the you know, seventy words for snow and love should 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:43.600 be so important that you should have one million, right 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:47.400 or you know, we should probably ask our our listeners 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:50.040 to let us know some of the words that they 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:53.360 use instead of love for love? Is there a standing? 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:55.439 Is there not? Because I would be really interested enough 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:58.760 from you guys. Um. But this word is then followed 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:03.960 by the really it feel good term serendipity. Serendipity does 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:07.280 come up a lot, yeah, grace and peace and other 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:10.840 favorites are polk ertude, although I have seen polkartudinus on 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:13.960 the other list and word of versions you collected the Guardian, 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:17.720 I think they railed against polkertude and polkartudinous. Yeah. I 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:20.359 didn't really get um, other than it sounds like a 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:24.480 mismatch from what it means, which is beautiful, schaden freud, perspicacious. 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:30.440 I like that one. Mellifluous, oh yeah, and discombobulate. Discombobulates 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:33.160 a big one. It has so many satisfying syllables in there, 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:35.280 it does. That's one that you can really kind of 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:37.600 garbble around in your mouth like a bunch of marbles. 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:40.600 And that's what some people like, I mean, and and 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:43.040 that's also what some people hate, right, So that's the sense. 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:46.480 It's not just the association, it's the way it sounds, 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:48.920 the way it feels to pronounce the word. We'll see. 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:51.520 That's the interesting part of it, right, because um, it's 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:54.480 not Yeah, it's like a physical response. And that's the 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:58.760 whole embodied cognition that if you do something physically, then 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:01.560 your your brain will fall low and have those sort 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:04.320 of patterns. So if you have discombobulated in your mouth, 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:07.879 then you feel sort of like you're luxuriating in language. 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:11.679 That's nice, RELI, that's very nice, thank you. So for 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:15.399 some reason, the oi diphthong has gotten a bit of 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:19.720 a bad rap well, because it shows up in moist 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:25.719 and groin goiter gitter. I love giter I just love it. 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:28.920 Should we discuss what an oral dipthong is? Go ahead, 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:32.399 all right, Well we're talking about our gliding vowels in 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:36.840 a one syllable word, so it uh diplong actually translate 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:40.199 literally to two voices or two sounds, so it's not 0:21:40.280 --> 0:21:44.880 just like your straightforward um clip right, it's cow ow cow. 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:48.840 That's nice. Yeah, you can't see eventually it's making a 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:51.600 lovely face that she pronounces. And it's too bad we 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:54.920 don't have a video accompaniment of this. We'll see when. 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:57.800 When this brings up this this idea too of um, 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:00.600 you know, these dipthongs and how words feel on our mouth. 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:05.560 It brings up this idea of synthsia, right, and synath 0:22:05.600 --> 0:22:09.080 asia is a perceptual condition in which information between the 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:12.280 senses is blended. So if I see a word, I 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:14.879 might see a color as well, or here are sound 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:17.840