Zoë Triska, “The Worst Word Ever” (Huffington Post, Sep. 18, 2012)
According to Ben Zimmer from Visual Thesaurus, their subscribers’ least liked words are “hate,” “no,” “like,” and “impossible.” These four make some sense–“like” is an overused filler word, and the other three are negative.
Some of their other least-liked words, however, are less easily explained: “moist,” “panties,” “ointment,” and “slacks.”
As Zimmer points out, it seems odd that “moist” should get such a bad rap, when words that sound like it, “hoist” or “joist,” are perfectly acceptable.
Read the rest here.