Scrumptious, Delectable, and Other Words I Can't Stand

I don't have strong feelings about the word 'moist'. The internet would lead you to believe that the majority of people are disgusted by it, yet I've personally never found it that bad. It's definitely not the nicest-sounding word in the world, but neither is it the worst. The thing I associate it with the most is cakes, and I certainly don't see it as having a sexual connotation, despite what Urban Dictionary may tell you.

I always thought people's responses to 'moist' (I'll stop using it now, for those of you who are bothered by it) were a little over-the-top. Who would get so disgusted by a simple word, without any context? That was what I thought until quite recently, when I realised that there are several words that cause me to have a similar reaction of total, irrational repulsion. All of these words seem to sit in the same vague, broad category, but these are two of the worst: scrumptious and delectable.

Of these two, scrumptious is very obviously the worst. I hate hearing either of them out loud, but saying 'scrumptious' makes me feel like my teeth are going to jump out of my mouth in protest. 'Delectable' feels like it has the potential to be pleasant to say, since it has lots of clear consonant sounds and doesn't all run into one mushy noise at the sides of your mouth like 'scrumptious' does - but still, the meaning ruins it for me. That's the biggest problem with these words: their associations. Like I said before, I think these two words fit into a broader category which is in itself a kind of niche within adjectives-associated-with-food. To give you some idea of what I mean, here are a few other words that I would also place in the same group (and which also cause me to experience varying degrees of revulsion):

• flavoursome
• scrummy
• toothsome
• delish
• delicious (in certain contexts)
• yummy
• succulent

Do you see the connection? All of these words are normally (but not always) used to describe food, and they all cause me to experience discomfort ranging from a mild cringe (succulent) to wanting to temporarily remove my ears and store them in a secure location where they can no longer be exposed to such horrors (scrummy). So they're all terrible, food-related words, but there's also some other aspect to them which I can't quite pinpoint.

I asked a few people if they felt the same disgust I did at these words, and although most people found my plight amusing rather than relatable, one of my sisters did provide some insight. She said that the words (specifically scrumptious and delectable) seemed 'pretentious' and 'try-hard posh'. Funnily enough, for me these words automatically conjure up an image of a comically upper-class person, perhaps the sort to be a grande dame or her effete son, saying something like "Oh, Jeeves, these canapés are simply delectable!" 

So there seems to be a common association of these words with pretentiousness, but I don't think that completely explains why they bother me so much. Another problem with them is that they seem, for lack of a better word, over-pronounced. I can barely imagine someone saying them without extra emphasis on the stressed syllable: delectable, yummy, succulent, delish, scrumptious, and so on. This has got to account for at least half of my disgust, because when I force myself to pronounce them with fairly neutral emphasis they don't bother me so much. Perhaps I'm unusually sensitive to this sort of thing, since I find it equally cringeworthy when people over-emphasise the last consonant in a word, as in tick (ticKK) or pot (poTT), with the extra exhalation of air at the end. That said, it oddly doesn't bother me at all when the consonant is turned into an entire syllable, as in tick-u or pot-u, which I've known some of my English students to do.

Still, there is one more element of these words that I can't stand. For some reason, they frequently have a sort of suggestive connotation, which makes them sound almost lascivious when said aloud. It doesn't help that some of them can explicitly apply to attractive people (usually women) as well as food. According to Lexico:

• 'Scrumptious' can mean '(of a person) very attractive'. It uses the example, 'He was the most scrumptious thing on two legs', which coincidentally makes me want to hurl myself off a cliff.
• 'Delectable' can be a humorous word for 'extremely attractive'
• 'Yummy' can mean 'highly attractive and desirable' - a definition familiar to anyone who's heard the nausea-inducing phrase 'yummy mummy'
• 'Scrummy' is only listed as meaning 'delicious', but it then lists the example sentence, 'If it isn't scrummy Sean Bean playing photography lecturer Paul'
• 'Delicious' has a secondary meaning in 'delightful', but then includes the example sentence, ‘But then Nicole arrives looking simply delicious, and her voice is tolerable enough.’

To be fair, some of the words I mentioned before, like flavoursome and succulent, don't seem to have any alternatively suggestive meanings besides referring to things like plants. Then again, I don't think it's a coincidence that the words with unambiguously food-related meanings are less repulsive to me. There's also the example of the word 'delicious', which I have absolutely no issue with when used in a food context but can't stand when used to refer to anything else. The latter immediately makes me think of a posh, creepy old man who enjoys the sound of his own voice far too much and has a habit of making inappropriate comments about young women in the vicinity  - but then perhaps I've just ended up with an unfortunate association, and my hatred of these words is a total overreaction. 

I'd be very interested to know if anybody else finds these words even half as bad as I do, or if there are any other words or phrases that bother you for unknown reasons. I think the psychology behind revulsion and abjection and all that is fascinating, and I'd love to discuss it further - just don't ask me to say any of these cursed words out loud.