doc-maverixk:
Nope. No. Nada. We only consider water to be wet because we are naturally dry. Wetness is only noticed when something is then surrounded by air. Dryness? Water itself isn’t wet.
If we say that “wet” is what happens when liquid is sticking to a dry surface, such as condensation on a glass, then we cannot say that water itself is wet, because it takes a liquid AND a something dry to define something as wet!
[ user takes several hours days? weeks? invested in research for the sake of winning an argument against a stranger on the internet :/ ]
I understand your standpoint but would like to point out the following:
Wet as a word quite literally comes from water. The earliest recorded version of the word, wed- comes from Proto-Indo-European (aka PIE), the hypothetical common ancestor to all Indo-European languages. Wed- in it’s most basic form means water in PIE and is where the basis of the word “wet” comes from.
The quote is from an opinion piece with, sadly, no citations, but evidence for this claim can be found here.
So, fine — you can chock how we perceive wetness up to a linguistic flaw, because we don’t exactly have a word to describe the sensation of water on a molecular level, do we? After all, we can’t feel dihydrogen monoxide or even perceive it with the naked eye until there are enough of those molecules together.
Linguistics aside, the structure of water is complicated at best. As I previously stated, there needs to be a certain amount of dihydrogen monoxide molecules for it to be observable, and even then, they can be arranged in such a way that they are either a solid, liquid, or gas. Ice, for example, isn’t necessarily “wet” until it reaches a certain temperature to produce moisture; same as when it presents in a gaseous state. But under those conditions is when we have water, which undeniably has the ability to make things wet.
Really, it all boils down to the molecular structure of dihydrogen monoxide in this state and the hydrogen bonds therein. From what I understand, liquid water has a hydrogen bond different from ice or steam, primarily due to differences in temperature affecting this bond.
According to Richard Saykally, chemist at the University of California, Berkley, “strong tetrahedral hydrogen bonding” makes water wet. (Source).
Sorry to say, Doc, but I think it’s safe to say that water is, in fact, wet.