1889 Cent. Dict. s.v. Corpuscle,Tactile corpuscles..Also called..touch-corpuscles, *touch-bodies, palpation-corpuscles.
1897 Parker & Haswell Zool. II. 100Touch-corpuscles are formed of an ovoidal mass of connective tissue containing a ramified nerve, the terminal branches of which end in *touch-cells.
1876 Duhring Dis. Skin 26Tactile corpuscles are also called *touch corpuscles.
1899 Allbutt's Syst. Med. VI. 641A trophic centre in a touch corpuscle.
1972 Harper's Bazaar Oct. 72/1 Dance experts agree that, as the East goes, so goes the nation, and what you've heard by now is true—‘*touch’, ‘partner’, ‘ballroom’ dancing is back.
Ibid. 72/3Freddie doesn't *touch dance at all.
1974 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 23 Feb. 18/4 The latest craze among young people in the U.S. is ‘touch dancing’, which their mums and dads used to call ‘dancing cheek-to-cheek’.
1884 tr. Lotze'sMetaph. iv. 507 heading,How can *Touch-feelings form a series?
1939 Daily Tel. 18 Dec. 11/1Jenkins..alternated long *touch-finders with sliced shots.
Ibid. ,Ellis was allowed a lot of latitude in..putting in *touch-finding kicks.
1960 Times 30 Nov. 3/6 The small, durable halves were dedicated touch-finders.
1976 Leicester Mercury 14 Oct. 46/1 It was a very solid display of good catching, good touch-finding and some probing entries into the line.
1933 Jrnl. Health & PhysicalEduc. Oct. 41/1*Touch football is now a scientific and standardized game.
1951 J. Steinbeck Burning Bright i. 37,I was..just playing around with some of the fellows—touch football.
1977 Transatlantic Rev. lx. 119You often see Winterville kids playing touch football along the parkway.
1893 Daily News 14 Dec. 2/6 Messrs. Temple Gordon and Percy Christopherson were *touch judges.
1894 Westm. Gaz. 11 Jan. 5/3Altogether 14 players were injured, the touch-judge was threatened, and the referee reported that it had never been his lot to witness such a shameful exhibition.
1905 Titchener Exper. Psychol. II. i. 159 Fig. 60.Scripture's *touch key.
1954 J. B. G. Thomas On Tour vi. 71They..saved and counter-rushed and *touch-kicked with unerring accuracy.
1960 Times 31 Oct. 4/4 Long *touch-kicks.
1978 Morecambe Guardian 14 Mar. 11/3 Glover took a while to find his usual accuracy with his touch kicks.
1936 Times 9 Jan. 4/3 Some excellent *touch-kicking by Morris forced the Navy back into their own ‘25’.
1884 St. James'Gaz. 13 June 4/2The true dealer's *touch-knowledge of Oriental antiquities.
1904 H. J. L. J. Massé Pewter Plate xiv. 190The *touch-marks usually were the initials of the maker of the pewter, and various other devices such as the Company's quality mark.
1959 L. Gross Housewives' Guide to Antiques viii. 103Some, but not all, pewter will be found with a touch-mark.
1974 L. Koenig Little Girl iii. 34A pewter tankard..seemed to demand examination. She..turned it over to study the touchmark.
1763–6 W. Lewis Comm. Phil. -Techn. 124Accustoming himself to compare the colours of a good set of *Touch needles.
1884 F. J. Britten Watch & Clockm. 266Touch needles are small bars of gold, one each of all the different standards likely to be tested.
1980 Displays I. 206/1 These experimental studies, conducted during the development of the *Touch-pad, demonstrate the viabiity of an off-display touch input device.
1983 Your Computer Aug. 32/2 Once out of its package the Wizzard takes on the appearance of a quite simple, compact unit, complete with two joysticks, touch pads and firing buttons.
1591 Sylvester Du Bartas i. vii. 36Down falls the Cock, up from the *Touch-pan flies A ruddy flash.
1974 Physics Bull. June 225/2One of these is a *touch panel made of a glass plate on which capacitors are thinly etched in copper. A tv tube behind the panel ‘names’ the capacitors in an array of 4 × 4 and these ‘buttons’ can be ‘pushed’ by merely touching the panel.
1981 J. B. Adams in J. H. Mulvey Nature of Matter vii. 156The operator..can send instructions to any component of the machine by means of a touch panel, which identifies the component, and one knob, which determines the required action.
1750 Phil. Trans. XLVI. 449Neither these, nor those of Cheltenham, will deflagrate or flash in *Touch-Paper.
1832 Miss Mitford VillageSer. v. 113Why dost thou not fire?.. So please your worship, the wind hath extinguished the touch-paper.
1873 E. Spon Workshop ReceiptsSer. i. 131/2Touchpaper..placed..round the mouth of the firework, and twisted into a point.
1778 Pryce Min. Cornub. 178have a *touch-pipe, that is, rest..half an hour to smoke a pipe. [ The miners]
1508 Acc. Ld. HighTreas. Scot. IV. 122For vernesing of ane lang culveryn and gilting of the end of it and the *twich plaith.
1902 Welch Hist. Pewterers' Co. I.Introd. 1The..inventories of the Company's goods show that touch-plates existed at an early date.
a1618 Sylvester Spectacles xii,How soon doe Odours from thy Nostrils fly! How short, *touch-Pleasures (tipt with pain and fear)!
1602 Blundevil Theoriques Seuen Planets 29The *Touch-point, otherwise called the point of concauitie.
Ibid. 73The right line BHP sheweth the Touch-point.
1956 Nature 7 Jan. 47/1 *Touch-preparations of spleen and lung on slides were fixed in 95 per cent ethanol at 37°C. for 30 min.
1975 Ibid. 17 July 225/2Spleens were sectioned sagittally and touch preparations were made and stained with the Wright-Giemsa stain or benzidine.
1977 Arab Times 14 Dec. 9/7 Both entail constant running, both in defence and attack, especially *touch rugby. [ games]
1942 C. Milburn Diary 16 Dec. (1979) 161He talks of hockey, soccer and *touch-rugger, describing the latter game.
1974 Management Informatics III. 70/1 As a first step, a prototype *touch screen was designed and constructed in our Laboratory by Mr. Stephen Salter.
1983 Austral. Personal Computer Aug. 60/2The touch-screen and light-pen both have the limitation that the user must first identify the location that has to be touched, and then a physical movement has to be made... Also, touch screens do get finger-marked.
1865 S. H. Hodgson Time & Space ii. 78A combination of a whole series of *touch-sensation into a solid whole is apparently possible..in grasping a small object, where the fingers meet each other.
1899 Allbutt's Syst. Med. VII. 35The transmission of ordinary touch sensations being unimpaired.
1969 Bull. Radio &Electr. Engin. Div. Nat. Res. Council Canada July–Sept. 15 (heading)An X-Y *touch sensitive position encoder for computer input.
1979 Washington Post Mag. 25 Mar. 5/3The clavichord changed. Its keyboard widened... ‘It got louder and more touch-sensitive,’ says Tom.
1983 Listener 12 May 3/2 You controlled your route by pressing buttons on a touch-sensitive screen.
1959 *Touch shot . [ see dinkn. 2]
1969 New Yorker 14 June 56/2 A loose, liberal, infuriating touch shot.
1906 C. S. Sherrington Integrative Action of Nervous System ix. 324The retina is thus a group of glorified ‘warm-spots,’ and the cochlea a group of glorified ‘*touch-spots’.
1927 Haldane & Huxley AnimalBiol. v. 122The fineness of discrimination for touch depends mainly on the closeness of touch-spots.
1968 D. F. Horrobin Med. Physiol. &Biochem. xxv. 150/2There are touch spots, cold spots and warm spots, each particularly sensitive to one modality.
1927 Haldane & Huxley AnimalBiol. xii. 268Most..of the group possess nerves, and at least scattered sense-organs for perceiving *touch-stimuli.
a1860 Alb. SmithLond. Med. Stud. (1861) 61Crackers..contrived to explode at any period..by attaching graduated pieces of *touch-string to them.
1962 Official Gaz. (U.S. Patent Office) 19 June tm 122American Telegraph and Telephone Company, New York... *Touch-Tone. For providing telephone communication service.
1970 O. Dopping Computers & Data Processing xi. 163If the telephone is of the touch-tone type, the same buttons that are used for dialling can be used also for putting questions, expressed in numerical form, to the computer.
1972 Sci. Amer. Sept. 112/3The first telephone switching systems were actuated by human operators; today the job is done automatically by means of a dial or ‘Touch-Tone’ terminal on the user's telephone.
1976 National Observer ( U.S. ) 10 Apr. 9/4Touch-tone converters. This device changes your dial telephone to a touch-tone telephone.
1962 Punch 8 Aug. 191/1 If you will learn to *touch-type, I will give you a new, feather-light portable.
[ 1897in Story of Typewriter (1923) 113Omaha has become the storm centre of the commotion over the touch method of typewriting. ]
1947 K. Jaediker Tall, Dark & Dead viii. 117All I know about *touch-typing is that there are home keys and if you don't put your fingers on them, you go haywire.
1976 ‘J. Fraser’ Who steals my Name? iv. 46Many coppers had done touchtyping courses.
1929 Telegr. & TelephoneJrnl. XVI. 13/1Attention was concentrated upon touch-typing with the object of turning out highly-skilled *touch-typists.
1972 ‘J. & E. Bonett’ No Time to Kill vii. 90I'm not a touch typist. Very few writers are.
1644 Bulwer Chirol. 172The grape of the Index ..is..chiefe *Touch-warden to the King of the five senses. [ finger]
1676 B. W [ illis] Man. Goldsm. 30The Wardens that are to make the Assays and mark the Silver, are now called the Touch-Wardens.
1862 Catal. Internat. Exhib. ,Brit. II.No. 3324*Touch watches, regulators, and railway clocks.
1884 F. J. Britten Watch & Clockm. 33Blind Man's Watch... A watch in which the progress of the hands may be ascertained by touch... The objection to this form of touch watch is that if the pointer is pressed hard against the finger it is apt to advance the hands of the watch.
1905 Titchener Exper. Psychol. II. ii. 46The *Touch-Weights. Sets of these weights were made, a few years ago, by Willyoung.
1915 Literary Digest ( N.Y. ) 21 Aug.Advt. p. i,Great numbers were so-called *touch-writers—yet there has hardly been a single one who hasn't doubled or trebled his or her speed and accuracy.
1891 W. Camp Amer. Football 172A *touch-back is made when a player touches the ball to the ground behind his own goal, the impetus which sent the ball across the line having been received from an opponent.
1941 Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Va. ) 14 Jan. 11This used to be an automatic touchback and the ball was placed in play on the 20-yard line.
1976 Webster's Sports Dict. 455/2Touchback. Speedball. A situation in which the ball is driven over the end line by an offensive player without scoring.
1825 Jamieson Suppl. II. 568/2Tig, a game among children, in which one strikes another and runs off... This game in S is the same with *Touchlast in E [ cotland] . [ ngland]
1902 . [ see hepers. pron. 6 b]
1927 Sunday Express 17 July 8/2 The younger and sprightlier guests..played ‘touch last’ on the lawn.
1951 E. Graham My Window looks down East iv. 29He walks sideways away from her, like a child playing ‘touch-last’.
1885 Athenæum 1 Aug. 144/3 Tom Moore did not..give the great novelist a retrospective *touch-up with his poetic pencil.
1907 Times 3 May 4/1, I ask your lordship to give a sort of a kind of ‘touch-up’ to these people.
1777 Gamblers i. 221 [ T. Swift] Now sounds the Grill; 'tis Setts, and Touch-no-wall, And Chaces echo thro' the lattic'd Hall.
18.. Laws Tennis §33 in J. Marshall Ann. Tennis (1878) 166When the odds of touch-no-walls, or touch-no-side-walls, are given, a ball returned by the giver of the odds, which makes a nick, is counted for the striker.
1878 J. Marshall Ann. Tennis 160Touch-no-walls, or All-the-walls: a point of cramped-odds, by which the giver of the odds loses a stroke whenever a ball, returned by him, touches a wall or a gallery-post, or enters an opening, before falling on the floor.
[ 1975Internat. Jrnl. Man-MachineStud. VII. 657In Marson's two-layer touch-operated tablet (1971), a transparent, flexible diaphragm with a conductive surface makes contact (under finger pressure) with a sheet of conducting glass.
1980 Summary of World Broadcasts: Far East Weekly Econ. Rep. (B.B.C.) 30 Apr. A/6A pen-touch tablet that converts Chinese into numerals, or feeds according to strokes of characters. ]
1983 Christian Science Monitor 17 June 8/3 It employs what could be called a canvas (a *touch tablet), a brush (an electronic stylus), paints (area marked with colors), and a mixing palette.
1984 Listener 13 Dec. 38/1 Macy's had a large display of touch-tablets like the British Touchmaster pad.
touch-
combining form
Etymology: obsolete touch-powder, powder used for priming a gun, from Middle English towchepoudre, from Middle French toucher to touch, kindle (a fire) + Middle English poudre powder
: serving for quick ignition
< touchhole >
< touchwood >
< touchhole >
< touchwood >