So literally everything on the surface of the planet, in every building, in every room, is wet? That makes it a completely useless definition and is obviously not what anyone means when they’re talking about something being “wet”.
If air with 0% humidity can be called dry, then air with humidity can be called wet.
Language isn’t perfect and it’s often contextual. If someone wants to describe a property of water based on a newer usage in physics, maybe choose a newer word.
Ahh okay, I think I get what you’re getting at. It’s like how if you dry off after a shower, your towel is damp and not wet because you’re just looking at saturation.
I’d be surprised if other languages call the air “wet” because that’s an English word. In Chinese, we’d call humidity 湿度 which means “degree of wet”.
Ahh okay, I think I get what you’re getting at. It’s like how if you dry off after a shower, your towel is damp and not wet because you’re just looking at saturation.
Yep, you put it better than I did! Even if the air is fully humid, you’re still not wet, as there won’t be liquid water on you. Once there’s enough to actually form liquid water, you’ll be wet.
I’d be surprised if other languages call the air “wet” because that’s an English word. In Chinese, we’d call humidity 湿度 which means “degree of wet”.
Fair point, I didn’t know about Chinese. I was talking about other languages I know, none of which refer to humidity as wetness (in the respective language obviously), they all use separate words.
While I agree that water is wet in general, I don’t think this is a complete question. It’s somewhat difficult to answer because I don’t know what the person asking’s expectations are.
Water is wet if we’re talking about how it feels to interact with and how it will make us wet too.
Water isn’t wet if we’re talking about things which are supposed to be dry but aren’t, like when surveying the damage after a spill.
It’s not useless if you understand wet as a relative term. There can be a normal level of wetness where if it is exceeded we then call that thing wet, and if it’s under that threshold we call it dry relative to the norm.
So literally everything on the surface of the planet, in every building, in every room, is wet? That makes it a completely useless definition and is obviously not what anyone means when they’re talking about something being “wet”.
If air with 0% humidity can be called dry, then air with humidity can be called wet.
Language isn’t perfect and it’s often contextual. If someone wants to describe a property of water based on a newer usage in physics, maybe choose a newer word.
Yet we don’t do this, we call it humid.
But then what is humidity if not a measurement of how wet the air is?
A measurement of humidity, as the name suggests.
Please just explain why we don’t call humid air “wet”. I’ve never heard anyone call it that in any language. How can this be?
Ahh okay, I think I get what you’re getting at. It’s like how if you dry off after a shower, your towel is damp and not wet because you’re just looking at saturation.
I’d be surprised if other languages call the air “wet” because that’s an English word. In Chinese, we’d call humidity 湿度 which means “degree of wet”.
Yep, you put it better than I did! Even if the air is fully humid, you’re still not wet, as there won’t be liquid water on you. Once there’s enough to actually form liquid water, you’ll be wet.
Fair point, I didn’t know about Chinese. I was talking about other languages I know, none of which refer to humidity as wetness (in the respective language obviously), they all use separate words.
So then why isn’t water wet if there is clearly liquid water touching liquid water?
While I agree that water is wet in general, I don’t think this is a complete question. It’s somewhat difficult to answer because I don’t know what the person asking’s expectations are.
Water is wet if we’re talking about how it feels to interact with and how it will make us wet too.
Water isn’t wet if we’re talking about things which are supposed to be dry but aren’t, like when surveying the damage after a spill.
I don’t mean to butt in if the two of you are just having fun, but this Vsauce video on the philosophy of definitions might help sort through some of the more confusing feelings.
It’s not useless if you understand wet as a relative term. There can be a normal level of wetness where if it is exceeded we then call that thing wet, and if it’s under that threshold we call it dry relative to the norm.