The answer is “moist”, and this word is the current front-runner in an on-going search to identify the most-hated word in the English language. The word has equal top-billing across U.S., U.K. and Canada, although other nations have picked different words. “Moist” is gaining traction in Australia and there could shortly be a fourth country that dislikes this word the most.
Why should “moist” feature so highly? According to The Daily Telegraph, it is the association with bodily functions that seems to turn most people off.
On hearing the news, a number of people have taken to Twitter to find ways of adding “moist” into their tweets.
In the U.K., the most disliked words vying for second, third and forth place are “no”, “Brexit” and “British.” Of these, “no”, carrying negative connotations is unsurprising; “Brexit” is a reference to the recent campaign for the U.K. to leave the European Union, being a truncatation of the words “Britain” and “exit.” Of the fourth word, “British”, this seems a little peculiar to be ranked so high as a despised word.
In the Netherlands and Germany, “no” is least popular word; while “love” and “sorry” have a low standing in India. Whereas in Spain, “hello” is a surprising number one disliked word. Meanwhile voters in Italy appear to dislike “thoroughly” and “absolutely”.
Speaking with the BBC, Dan Braddock, from Oxford University Press, explained this was the first time the world’s biggest dictionary had undertaken such a project, stating “we’re not entirely sure what to expect yet”. He added: “We thought for a long time about the question to open with, but we decided to go down the negative route,” explaining “we thought people were more likely to have strong opinions about a negative subject matter.”
The Oxford English Dictionary poll tracks progress of submissions from around the world. When completing the survey participants were asked what their least favorite English word was, their country, their age and their gender.
Update: due to an excessive amount of profanity, the Oxford English Dictionary has closed the poll, stating: “we regret to inform users that due to severe misuse we have had to remove this feature from our website.”