The War on "Moist"
I have heard the angry voices (particularly God's and Stephen King's--or maybe it was just Stephen King's) raised against the spreading curse of words that end in -ly, with particular emphasis on dastardly constructs like "only" and "early." Today, for the first time, I've seen lexical blood spilled on a new front, against the horror of the word people are said to revile above all others...
...moist.
Well. I'm a cultured individual, long steeped in the ways of the world, and no stranger to the pleasures of the mind and the senses. I have tasted anchovies. I have drunk sweet wine. I have read Barry Malzberg. I have danced the Invisible Horse Dance with my nieces and nephews. I have cocked an ear to what was either interstellar noise or leaky capacitors. I have gazed upon the jade sculpture on my tall bookcase until I became...well, you know what I became. I signed up once to pet a naked mole rat, but the line was too long and we had to go home. Genuine WTF moments have gotten thin in this, the seventh decade of my life. But the war on "moist" caught me up short.
I thought it was the primary virtue of cakes. If not, well, what do you call a cake that isn't dry? Wet? Damp? Sodden? Moldy? (HuffPo takes on this crucial question with elan.)
I see that this is nothing new. The war on "moist" began a long time ago, at least as long ago as 2009. I missed it somehow. The Colorado Springs Gazette did not run the story under a 500-point rendering of "WAR!" Nobody mentioned it on Slashdot, nor Ars Technica, which posts on lots of things it knows nothing about. The war on hated words was highlighted in the New Yorker in 2012, and while there was a long line leading to the word gallows (with "phlegm" and "fecund" fidgeting while waiting their turn) the word eye-to-eye with the Lord High Executioner was "moist." Men who use the word "moist" are undateable. There is even a Facebook group called "I HATE the word MOIST!" (Well, that certainly nails it.)
So what's the deal?
The question came up recently on the Facebook wall of a writer friend of mine. A woman whom I don't know explained: "Just imagine your 65-year-old mother reading it aloud as she reaches a pivotal sex scene in a romance novel. Enough said."
Enough indeed, especially if you knew my mother, who would be 88 this year if she were still with us. She spent a considerable chunk of her life keeping parts of her house from becoming a little too moist with spilled milk, dog vomit, and thrown cream-of-mushroom mushrooms, which are moist squared. I'm guessing she didn't have to read sex scenes aloud to be moist-averse. Small children and dogs were plenty.
My view? This has already gone too far. The word "moist" has not been seen in actual use in several months, though many have spoken passionately about it. Alas, its parents "most" and "mist" have unearthed a suicide note. We bludgeoned it, we drew and quartered it, we broke it on Little Orphan Annie's code wheel, and we mopped up the gore with a towelette. We will not have "moist" to push around anymore. Who will be next? Who? Who?
The New Yorker says: "Slacks."
I'm in.