Various flowers, such as tulips, definitely hate moths.
Comment on nighttime pollinator gang rise up
azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
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?
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 2 days ago
Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 3 days ago
What do mean regarding terrible names? “Moth” isn’t inherently a bad name; any negative connotations of the word come from the creature itself.
azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
The phonology of “moth” is just bad (not just subjectively but in a way that I’m sure linguistics 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.
Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Hang on, what is bad about the word moist? Some of my favourite things are moist!