More than 10,000 people have responded to the survey so far. Well, congratulations: You’re in excellent company.
Advertisement
Instead, Dr Thibodeau’s research suggested an association with bodily functions may have been a key contributing factor, with participants who hated “moist” also found to hate words like “vomit” and “phlegm” – the latter of which now features in Australia’s top five most hated words on the OneWordMap.
At the time of writing nearly 10,000 people had participated in the global survey, with “moist” so far proving to be the most despised word in the United Kingdom, Australia, United States and Canada. Surprisingly, “hello” is the least popular word in Spain, while in the Netherlands “war” and “love” feature in the top five.
The project should discover the least popular words in the English language, and give people the opportunity to contribute to research by Oxford Dictionaries.
Despite the poll’s findings, “moist” does not appear to be universally despised. Because this is such a new thing for us, we’re just going to see how it goes. In the U.K., “Islam” has received by far the most votes for most-hated word, and in the US the religion appears second on the list.
“The map displays the top five submitted words in any country, but there are obviously many more words being submitted”.
In Japan, where only a few submissions have been tallied as of this writing, “consent” appears as one of the most-loathed words.
“We expect to see a lot of words related to various political topics and issues”, Oxford University Press’s Daniel Braddock told IBTimes UK.
“We’re really not sure what words people will choose, but our expectation is that they will be fuelled by a multitude of reasons”, he said. Will “moist” claim its crown, or will rising socioreligious tensions unseat it?
Advertisement
One of my friends shudders every time she hears the word “panties” and another can’t deal with the word “basin” because every time he felt ill his mam would offer him a basin.
