moist [ME] Moist once topped a newspaper poll to find the most disliked word in English. Despite this, moist, unlike *damp, can have a positive sense—compare ‘moist cake’ and ‘damp cake’. We know that moist was borrowed from French, but where French got it from is obscure. It may come from a post-classical form of Latin mucidus ‘slimy, mouldy, musty’, source also of mucus (see muck) with some influence from Latin musteus ‘juicy’ from mustus ‘fresh’. Musty [LME] seems not to come from the same route but to be an alteration of moisty [LME].