View Single Post
Copernicus's Avatar
Posts: 1,986 | Thanked: 7,698 times | Joined on Dec 2010 @ Dayton, Ohio
#1650
Originally Posted by pichlo View Post
Unless you separate a single molecule, you can think of water as two smaller bodies of water, each making the other one wet.
In terms of physics, this is correct -- if you define the word "water" in an appropriate manner. However, linguistically, the word "water" in English is a mass noun. As such, it is treated as an undifferentiated substance, such that specific individual ("countable") subsets cannot be identified. Moreover, water has "cumulative reference": i.e., if X is "water" and Y is "water", the sum X + Y is still "water".

So I would argue, at least in terms of English usage, that no, water cannot be made "wet". Any unit of water added to another unit of water becomes treated as just a single mass of water.