An embarrassingly long time ago, I received the following message:
I am sorry to bother you - but in your challenge today - what is wrong with the word moisty - it seems to be in every dictionary I've looked up
My reply was:
Thanks for the comment. I'm always grateful for suggestions to improve the puzzle's word list. Unfortunately there's quite a backlog of suggestions, so it might be a while before I look at "moisty". But if it is in a few dictionaries I will add it to the list.
Now, nearly 6 years later, I've looked into the suggestion. Well, I did warn them it might take some time.
I don't know about
moisty being in every dictionary, but it is in quite a few. This is what the online Oxford has to say:
archaic, informal
(especially of weather) moist or damp.
'a misty, moisty day'
When applied to the weather, the word seems to be usually coupled with
misty, as in the Oxford's illustration.
One Misty, Moisty Morning is a traditional children's song. A
USA Today article in 2011 about Saturn's moon Titan wrote:
The misty moisty mornings on Xanadu are blanketed by a dense orange fog.
(Xanadu is the name given to a region on the surface of Titan.)
The word appears unaccompanied by
misty when it's applied to food. For example a Malaysian cooking website, writing about a moist chocolate cake, said:
Yes, you can steam this cake. Or bake it like most of my blogging friends did. It's still moisty!
Apparently the video game Fortnite has a locality called Moisty Mire.
So, belatedly, I'll add
moisty as a rare word.
