Some say that water is obviously wet. It does indeed seem obvious to some, but to others, not so much. They insist that water merely makes things wet, not that it is wet in and of itself. Indeed, they can propose some initially challenging scenarios that put to the test the idea that water really is wet. These include:

If you fill a glass of water with more water, is it more wet than it was before?

Is the water soaked with itself?

If water is wet, how come we don't say things like, "My water got wet!"?

Initially, that did have me thinking. But the more I researched and thought about it, the more I came to realize that every step of the way, the argument of water not being wet fails and cannot stand on its own in any form. Here is what I found.

Definitions

The first thing people will cite is the definition of "wet." This is:

Covered or soaked with a liquid, such as water.

This definition is by the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition, and it's the first definition that pops up when you look up any definition, if it has one for what you searched. They say that "Water is not covered with water, nor soaked with water. Therefore, water is not wet." But I would beg to differ, for the water actually is covered with water. The water molecules are covered with other water molecules. It's only not covered with water if you treat the whole liquid as one object, which is fair, but it's not reality.

In addition, what they fail to realize is that other definitions exist.

Consisting of, containing, covered with, or soaked with liquid (such as water).

Moistened, covered, or soaked with water or some other liquid.

Covered in water or another liquid.

The first definition agrees that water is wet, because water is consisting of liquid, and, as stated earlier, the water molecules are covered with other water molecules. The second definition also agrees that water is wet, because the water molecules are covered with other water molecules. The third definition also agrees that water is wet, because the water molecules are covered with other water molecules. You get the point.

The case becomes even stronger when you realize that wet and dry are opposites. So, let's define dry by the four sources that I used to define wet:

Free from liquid or moisture.

Free or relatively free from a liquid and especially water.

Free from moisture or excess moisture; not moist; not wet.

Used to describe something that has no water or other liquid in, on, or around it.

The first definition agrees that water is not dry because water is not free from itself. The second definition agrees that water is not dry because it is not free or even relatively free from itself. The third definition agrees that water is not dry because it is not free from itself. The fourth definition agrees that water is not dry because water doesn't have none of itself in, on, or around it.

So, given this, it's clear that water is not dry. That's common sense, but I brought up definitions because that's what this conversation comes to. So, if water isn't dry, what else is it? I mean, for proponents that water is not wet, congratulations, you just agreed that water is dry, because the third definition literally uses the exact words "not wet." It could not be more clear. If water is not dry, it has to be wet, otherwise you'd have to argue that wet and dry are not opposites.

It's funny how the proponents of water not being wet will use the definition as their first argument, even though they know so little about definitions and about how the exact words "not wet" are used in the definition of dry, even though they would agree that water is not dry. If they wouldn't like to agree to the exact wording of that definition, they shouldn't use the exact wording of another definition as their argument either.

Instead, they'll say that water is a third option, neither wet nor dry. Or, it isn't anything, not wet, not dry, not a third option. However this claim is completely unscientific, as there is no evidence for it, and the only reason they propose this idea is so they can claim that water is not wet, which is circular: water is not wet because it is the third state, and it is the third state because it is not wet. Rather, there is quite a lot of evidence that water is wet, and that no such third state exists or can exist.

Thought experiments

Some will or will then resort to thought experiments, such as the ones I mentioned earlier. Let's address these.

If you fill a glass of water with more water, is it more wet than it was before?

Yes, because the more liquid there is, the more wet it is. The less liquid there is, the more dry it is. They think that the answer isn't intuitive enough for someone to answer in honesty, even though they themselves are arguing for something rather counterintuitive.

Is the water soaked with itself?

No, but it is covered with other water, as I stated earlier. And because no definition has singled out being "soaked" as the only metric, that means that just because water isn't "soaked" doesn't mean it isn't wet.

If water is wet, how come we don't say things like, "My water got wet!"?

Because there's no practical reason to say that. But just because a word isn't practically used in a particular way doesn't mean its definition doesn't allow for the word to be used that way.

Conclusion

Any way you look at it, water is obviously wet, and obviously not dry. Those who say water is not wet have no idea how much evidence there is against their claim, even while using their very arguments such as definitions.

Water doesn’t consist of a liquid. It is a liquid.

Here are three definitions of "consist of":

To be formed or made up of (specified things or people).

To be made of or formed from something.

To be made up or composed (usually followed by of).

Saying that the entire entity of water "consists of" water is treating the entire entity of water as one thing, thus it is made up of the finer units of water molecules. Whereas individual water molecules consist of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. And since I was referring to the water molecules, it appears you are correct in this statement. I therefore concede that that part of the definition of "wet" does not apply. Nonetheless, the rest of the parts of the definitions still apply.

Do we ever say that things are covered in themselves?

It depends on how you define "themselves." Sure, the water molecules aren't covered with themselves in fundamental being. But they are covered with themselves in the sense that they are covered with their own kind. The water molecules are all separate molecules, however they are the same kind of molecule, so in that sense, the molecules are covered with themselves. And regardless, this still means that the molecules are covered with water molecules, meaning the water is covered with water.

Saying water is [not] wet does not make it dry.

Yes it does, because wet and dry are opposites. This is common knowledge we all have learned in Kindergarten, and it is a necessity by definition.

Also, ever heard of dry water?

Dry water isn't just water, it's water droplets covered with silica coatings. Just because it's called "dry water" doesn't mean the water itself is dry, it means that the powder is dry. If you have to add something to water in order to call it dry, then water itself is not dry, otherwise you'd be able to demonstrate that water is dry just by using water exclusively.

More wet is when something has more water on it. More water isn’t wetter by itself. Adding more water doesn’t change the properties of the water.

Such as when the water has more water on it, as I said earlier when I talked about how the water molecules are covered with other water molecules.

The definition of dry is not “not wet.” It is “free from liquid or moisture.”

Except for one of the definitions I provided. You're just cherry picking which definitions you want to use to fit your argument, even though your move is plain for everyone to see.

It is not practical. Water can’t get wetter.

Indeed it is not practical, however water can get wetter, just by surrounding it with more water.

For something to feel wet, we need to touch it because wetness is always in relation to a surface. This proves water alone cannot be wet.

The question isn't whether water feels wet, it's whether water is wet. This point is irrelevant, and does not "prove" that water alone cannot be wet.

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At different temperatures water can be hard or gassy? Are these forms still wet?

You propose the idea that water is less or more wet depending on its temperature because it appears to be uncomfortable to accept, so that such a difficulty can be revealed in my point. But actually, water is in fact less or more wet depending on its temperature. Water vapor is moist, whereas liquid water is wet. When you get your hand on them, it will therefore get different amounts of wet. The difference is their densities, which is being caused by their temperature. And a solid block of ice that is so cold that absolutely no liquid water is on its surface is dry. The only reason it might be wet is if some water on the surface melts into liquid, in which case it is not the ice that is wet, but the liquid water that melted from it. So yes, certain water is more wet than others.

...water molecules themselves do not exhibit wetness in the way described by the definitions, because they do not interact with a different substance to produce that condition.

Tell me where in the definitions does it specify that water has to adhere to another surface to be considered wet? The fundamental mechanism behind wetness is being done between water molecules, it just goes by the name "cohesion" instead of "adhesion" because it's the same material, but it's the exact same phenomenon.

Water itself is a state of matter, not a condition that can be classified as wet or dry. The answer is N/A. The question is not even valid to start.

No, liquid is a state of matter. Water is a material in a state of matter if there are multiple molecules involved. You haven't provided any evidence for this argument, so I still can't believe you. This doesn't make any sense.

Adding something to the water would make it dry? That’s what dryness is.

No, dryness is the absence of liquid. It says so in the definitions.

You’re cherry picking. I’m not even going to argue with this. We can all pick whatever definitions we like to fit the narrative.

If picking the first four most cited sources for definitions on the internet is what you call cherry picking. These definitions are by the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition, Merriam Webster Dictionary, dictionary.com, and the Cambridge Dictionary. And I used the first listed definition in each source. I cited four different credible definitions specifically so that I would be doing less cherry-picking, because it's hard to cherry pick four different sources that agree on something that isn't very good of a definition, especially when it's the first four definitions every single time. So what's far more likely is that these definitions agree with each other because the definitions they convey are actually good definitions.

You argue that water is wet by its very nature, so adding more water doesn’t make the water more wet.

I should clarify that a single water molecule is not wet, because whether something is a liquid or a solid or a gas is defined by its relationship between other molecules. So, if you add another water molecule in, then its relationship between that water molecule will define how wet it is, as well as how much of it there is. Of course, this means that a glass of water has plenty of water to make this distinction, and I can therefore say that the water itself is wet.

That’s what being wet means. Being wet is a feeling. It is a state of mind. In scientific terms, we would say how much water is in something. Wet isn’t a very scientific word.

Again, I have no reason to believe that's all wetness is because you haven't provided any evidence that wetness cannot be more than that.

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