Is water wet?

Define the term and the fight resolves. Wetness, in the sense chemists and materials scientists actually use, describes the condition of a solid surface with liquid adhering to it, wetting is literally the technical term for how liquids spread on solids, measured by contact angles. Under that definition, water is the agent of wetness, not its recipient: water makes things wet the way fire makes things burnt, and nobody argues fire is burnt.

The opposing camp defines wet as consisting of or saturated with liquid, and under that reading water is trivially, maximally wet. Some physicists offer a compromise: a single water molecule is not wet, but water molecules surrounded by other water molecules bonded to them arguably wet each other. This is what philosophers call a verbal dispute: the disagreement is entirely about which definition to use, not about any fact of the world.

Ruling: water is not wet, on the grounds that the technical definition beats the casual one when they conflict. We acknowledge the appeal will be filed immediately.