alt Hacker Newsit's all just silly semantics but even under the highly specific definition in the article I would say water is wet.
the articles definition "a liquid’s ability to maintain contact with a solid surface" Water has this property therefor water is wet.
On the topic of silly semantics, science as a discipline has the tendency to paint itself into linguistic paradoxes where the words does not mean what it means.
An example is "bug" where there is a (sighs) true bug(a very specific type of insect) But the one that really bothers me is Stonehenge. Stonehenge is the origin of the term, it literally means hanging stone. but... they started cataloging other similar circle-of-stone type monuments and calling them henges, a henge got defined to be more specifically a circle of stones with an inner ditch. But Stonehenge has an outer ditch.... So Stonehenge is not a henge... (Sighs again).
> the articles definition "a liquid’s ability to maintain contact with a solid surface" Water has this property therefor water is wet.
I disagree with your interpretation as that is using "wet" as a verb i.e. water can wet a surface.
I had no idea about the Stonehenge misnomer - I shall attempt to wrangle that into future conversations as I have some friends that are into ancient history/geology.
My favourite naming oddities are usually around fruits and nuts - a banana is a berry, but a strawberry isn't and of course, a brazil nut isn't a nut at all.