I didn’t even know disliking moths was a thing until recently.
Guess why? In French they are called “night butterflies”. It’s just a nocturnal butterfly so of course it’s brown, duh.
This feels like the Orca/Killer Whale debate again. Why do the English give such terrible names to animals like they’re trying to give children nightmares?
The phonology of “moth” is just bad (not just subjectively but in a way that I’m sure linguists could pick apart). It’s adjacent to “moist”. That’s the kind of name you give something you don’t like, a name made to be spat out. Contrast to other monosyllabic names like “fly”, a decidedly more despicable insect but with a much prettier name. Which one would be easier to use in a song?
Also I just checked and moths are butterflies, etymologically it’s just that old Germanic peoples assigned a different name to the less colorful butterflies.
I didn’t even know disliking moths was a thing until recently.
Guess why? In French they are called “night butterflies”. It’s just a nocturnal butterfly so of course it’s brown, duh.
This feels like the Orca/Killer Whale debate again. Why do the English give such terrible names to animals like they’re trying to give children nightmares?
What do mean regarding terrible names? “Moth” isn’t inherently a bad name; any negative connotations of the word come from the creature itself.
The phonology of “moth” is just bad (not just subjectively but in a way that I’m sure linguists could pick apart). It’s adjacent to “moist”. That’s the kind of name you give something you don’t like, a name made to be spat out. Contrast to other monosyllabic names like “fly”, a decidedly more despicable insect but with a much prettier name. Which one would be easier to use in a song?
Also I just checked and moths are butterflies, etymologically it’s just that old Germanic peoples assigned a different name to the less colorful butterflies.
Hang on, what is bad about the word moist? Some of my favourite things are moist!
Various flowers, such as tulips, definitely hate moths.