“**grima**, which is a Spanish word that there’s no direct translation for in English, essentially a kind of strong disgust that is mostly generated in response to hearing high-pitched squeaking noises or touching a surface with the fingernails “
In: Biology
I would imagine that it makes us averse to noises that damage our hearing and high-pitched noises are particularly high risk because, while low-pitched noises are more potentially damaging, they’re also much less common in nature. Also, it’s likely a side-effect of the way our ears evolved to be useful in OTHER ways. For instance, our ears and brains are quite tuned to the 1-4khz range, because that’s the natural speaking range where articulation of sounds happens for humans. Being tuned to that frequency in such a biased way likely caused side effects for other frequencies.
Excellent question. I believe the English word closest would be grimace.
However the sensation is due to this sound being close the primal scream. This is a warning scream that brings an instinctual adrenal response in humans, getting you ready to fight or flee.
There exists the word “grimace” in English to describe the facial expression associated with disgust / pain in case you were wondering.
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