Well, my lovely friend Alan asked for the word ‘moist’ as one of his least favourite words. So here you are. Moist. What is moist? Cakes are moist. Soil is moist. Early sexual secretions are moist. It’s really not a nice word. ‘Moisture’, strangely, is a bit better; and ‘moisturise’ I have little problem with.

Ooh, I’ll tell you what else is moist. The handshake of someone who turns out either to be a villain or to be a pathetic and/or wimpish character in books. Which is a bit unfair on people with ‘moist’ handshakes: you might have damp hands for any number of reasons and there shouldn’t be a moral element, yet somehow there is.

But I guess it’s all about the way you say it.

“Her body was slicked with sweat” somehow sounds much better than “She was moist all over” which just sounds quite icky. If you like a character, fellow writers, don’t describe them, or any part of their anatomy, as moist.