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.”According to Language Log's Mark Liberman: “There could very well be a viral aspect to this, where either through the media or just through real-world personal connections, the reaction to some particular word—for example, [that one regarding dampness]—spreads. But that’s the sheerest speculation.”
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
SQUAB, CORNUCOPIA, PANTIES, NAVEL, BRAINCHILD, CRUD, SLACKS, CREVICE, AND FUDGE: Slate digs even deeper into the concept of word aversion, and notes with regards to a certain word evocative of dampness:
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