“Nice” is also in the top five, presumably thanks to it being so inoffensive and nondescript that it’s tipped over into offensively boring.

“Moist”, “no” and “hate” seem to be universally unpopular, with “moist” also currently topping the list in Canada, Australia and the US. In India, “love” is emerging as the most disliked English word, while a few countries other than the UK don’t seem to like “hello”. In the Netherlands, the surprisingly contradictory “war” and “love” vie for attention.

The map allows people to submit their own despised words to contribute toward research that will later be split by country, age and gender to reveal more about our dislike of certain words. Many are sharing their choices on Twitter, while a quick office poll reveals “gusset”, “panties”, “crevice”, “flaccid” and “titillate” as stylist.co.uk pet hates, alongside “squelch”, “phlegm”, “smear”, “mucus” and “discharge”. Lovely.

So if you’ve got some linguistic bugbears, the kind that make you feel nauseous just to think about them, head to blog.oxforddictionaries.com (and really, don’t worry about writing them in the comments here. Really).

Guess which word is currently the most hated in the English language