ATLANTA — A study released Wednesday by the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Department of Linguistics has concluded that caulk remains, against all reasonable expectations, the single funniest word a grown man can encounter in a major American hardware retailer.
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The study tracked 4,000 adult male shoppers across 92 Home Depot locations between January and August. Researchers documented an audible reaction — a snort, a sniff, a quickly-suppressed laugh, or in 11% of cases a fully-formed text message to a friend — in 73% of subjects upon entering aisle 14.
The closest competitor, grout, registered at 4%.
“We expected the effect to fade with age,” said Dr. Lena Park, the study’s lead author. “It did not.”
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Subjects in their twenties laughed. Subjects in their fifties laughed. One 78-year-old subject, observed picking up a tube of silicone sealant, looked at the label, exhaled through his nose, and put it back. He did this four times.
The study also found that 41% of male shoppers, when asking a Home Depot employee for the location of caulk, will modify the request to avoid saying the word — most commonly substituting that stuff for the bathroom or the, you know, the white tube.
“They know what we mean,” said one Home Depot associate in suburban Atlanta, who has worked the plumbing aisle for nine years. “They always know what they mean. We always know what they mean. Nobody says the word. Nobody has to.”
The associate was asked when he last said the word out loud.
He thought about it for a moment.
“Probably 2019,” he said.
A follow-up phase of the study is planned for next year. Researchers intend to investigate whether flange and nipple — both of which appear in commercial plumbing nomenclature — produce comparable effects.
Early indicators, Dr. Park said, suggest they do not.
“Caulk is sui generis,” she said. “Caulk stands alone.”