Look, no imaginary-living-under-the-bridge-creature will break the illusion, we get that, but...

Can we get back on topic though??? Pretty please?

Definition of wet(ness) (from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wet):

I hope that all agree that water consists of water. What is problematic though is: ice does not consist of liquid. So ice is actually dry. Which brings the problematic-even-more question of 'dry ice', would love your input on that

Interesting! I guess that I disagree with this definition. There are, in fact, liquids which do not provoke the "wetness" sensation when touched. Take, for example, liquid mercury. At room temperature and one atmosphere of pressure, this substance exists in liquid form, but is far more strongly cohesive than water. As such, it will not spread to cover surfaces in the same manner water does. It also does not evaporate (and therefore provide a cooling effect) in the same manner as water.

So, if you place a drop of liquid mercury on your skin, are you now "wet"? Perhaps more importantly, would you feel wet?

I would argue there is a more complex set of factors involved in the concept of wetness, particularly in terms of human sensations. A definition that simply states "liquid" == "wet" is, in my opinion, straying too far from standard usage of the term. (I should note, this line of reasoning was already put forward in nieldk's argument.)

Ah, I see no need to stray into other phases of matter here. (Of course, solid carbon dioxide is called "dry ice" simply because it cannot maintain a liquid form at one atmosphere of pressure, and therefore sublimates directly from solid to gas phase, but that's neither here nor there. )

EDIT: Hey, I never noticed, but Wikipedia actually has an entire (and amazingly in-depth!) entry on "wetting". I do like their definition of the subject (although it also strays away from the more intuitive definition based on human sensations):

Is wetness a sensation? If so then I've been wrong all my life. I always thought that wetness is a condition. A road after the rain is wet even though it does not feel anything, with or without any observers.

Regarding (water) ice, of course ice and snow can be wet or dry, depending on how much liquid water it contains or is in contact with. This is usually a function of temperature and other atmospheric factors.

This really is a fascinating discussion. Thanks gerbick! It really got me thinking and I thought I had figured it out but now I'm even more confused.

The OED's definition of wet:

Based on that definition I deduced the following:

Thinking on a molecular level, I would say that a single, isolated H2O molecule is dry but if it comes into contact with another H2O molecule then that contact would mean that both molecules make each other wet.

Now when talking about a body of water, we can still think of it on a molecular level meaning the same applies therefore the body of water is wet, however due to language usage, it can also be thought of as a single abstract body and in that case it would be perfectly valid to consider the single body of water to be dry.

Then I thought about it a bit more and it raised all sorts of questions which I could not answer. Unlike solids, the molecules of a liquid are loosely coupled. If there are only two molecules and they touch, does that make them a solid? In that case they would not be wet. Is there a minimum number of molecules required to define them as a liquid? How do you define "coming into contact"? As we're talking about liquids, the molecules probably don't need to touch to "come into contact". Is there a maximum distance between molecules that defines them to be a liquid and not a gas?

Any chemists here? Oh wait, maybe our illustrious admin can help?

And how do you define two molecules "touching" anyway?

Sex
Which in terms, make you wet

Correction to self:

Makes you moist, and FEEL wet

Waiting for the tablet slowly turns out to be fun - thanks to this thread.

This thread is making me hydrophobic!

Well I have to say I haven't read the thread fully but from 4 words that I saw there is a debate about touching and thus this video needs to be seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE8rkG9Dw4s

Ah, this video is totally bogus. Here's the problem: when you say that the electrons surrounding two atoms push each other away (via the electromagnetic force), and that therefore two surfaces can never actually touch one another because their electrons keep them apart, I must ask: then what is the actual surface of an object?

Electrons themselves don't really have a surface (at least in the way we would think of it), and an "electron shell" is a very fuzzy concept as well. Neither of these serve well when trying to define the surface of an object. In actual fact, the only truly useful definition for the "surface" of a physical atomic structure, in terms of how it interacts with other physical structures, is the electromagnetic boundary surrounding that structure.

In short, don't believe this guy. When two surfaces touch one another, they really do touch. There's no other good way to describe the phenomenon.