touch-, comb. form
The n. or vb. in combination.
1. a. Simple attrib. combinations of the n., as touch-feeling, touch-knowledge, touch-pleasure, touch-sensation, touch-stimulus; touch-sensitive adj. b. Special combinations of the n. (or in some cases directly from the vb.-stem): touch-bodies, -corpuscles Anat., minute bodies of connective and nervous tissue occurring in the skin of the hands, feet, lips, and other parts, supposed to be connected with the sense of touch; also called tactile corpuscles; touch-cell Anat., a nerve-cell at the end of a sensory nerve in a touch-corpuscle; touch-dancing orig. U.S., dancing in which the partner is held close; hence (as a back-formation) touch-dance v. intr.; touch-finder Rugby Football, one who or a kick which succeeds in driving the ball into touch (touch n. 12); so touch-finding vbl. n. and ppl. a.; touch football U.S., a form of American football in which a player carrying the ball may be stopped simply by touching him, instead of tackling; touch judge, in Rugby Football, an umpire who marks when and where the ball goes ‘into touch’ (touch n. 12), corresponding to a linesman in the Association game; touch-key, name given to an instrument for scientific experiments on the sense of touch; touch-kicking Rugby Football, the action of kicking the ball into touch (touch n. 12); hence (as a back-formation) touch-kick v. intr.; so touch-kick n.; touch-mark, an official stamp on pewterware, esp. one identifying the maker; cf. touch n. 5 b; touch-needle, a slender bar or rod of gold or silver, one of a set of different standards of fineness, used in conjunction with a touchstone for testing the fineness of gold or silver; touch pad Computers, a computer input device in the form of a small touch panel; touch panel, a panel containing different areas that need only to be touched to operate an electrical device; touch-plate, one of a set of plates bearing the ‘touches’ or official marks of the company of pewterers (touch n. 5 b); † touch-point Geom., point of contact; touch preparation Microscopy, a preparation made by lightly touching cultured or freshly cut tissue with a slide so that a thin layer of cells adheres to it; touch-proof, in Sugar manuf.: a method of testing the degree of crystallization of the syrup by touching a drop of it, laid on the thumb, with the forefinger, and drawing it out to a thin thread; touch rugby or rugger, a version of rugby football in which touching takes the place of tackling; touch screen Computers, a VDU screen that is also an input device operated by touching it; touch shot Lawn Tennis, a shot without any force; touch spot Physiol., one of the spots on the skin specially sensitive to touch or pressure; Touch-Tone U.S., a proprietary name for telephone apparatus in which push-buttons take the place of a dial; touch-typing, the art of typing without looking at the keys; hence (as a back-formation) touch-type v. intr.; so touch-typist; † touch-warden: see quot. 1676 (cf. touch n. 5, v. 8); also fig.; touch watch, a watch so contrived that the time by it can be ascertained by touch, e.g. in the dark; touch-weight, one of a set of weights used in experiments on the sense of touch; touch-writer = touch-typist above. c. Connected with the notion of ready ignition: see touch-powder; touch-pan, the pan of an old-fashioned gun, into which the touch-powder was put; touch-paper, paper steeped in nitre so as to burn slowly on being touched by a spark, used for firing gunpowder, etc.; touch-place, the metal plate in which was the touch-hole of a culverin; touch-string, string steeped in nitre used as a fuse (cf. touch-paper). See also touch-box, touch-hole, touchwood.
| 1889 Cent. Dict. s.v. Corpuscle, Tactile corpuscles..Also called..touch-corpuscles, *touch-bodies, palpation-corpuscles. |
| 1897 Parker & Haswell Zool. II. 100 Touch-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 26 Tactile corpuscles are also called *touch corpuscles. 1899 Allbutt's Syst. Med. VI. 641 A 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. 72/3 Freddie 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's Metaph. iv. 507 heading, How can *Touch-feelings form a series? |
| 1939 Daily Tel. 18 Dec. 11/1 Jenkins..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 & Physical Educ. 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. 119 You 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. 5/3 Altogether 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. 71 They..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 4/2 The true dealer's *touch-knowledge of Oriental antiquities. |
| 1904 H. J. L. J. Massé Pewter Plate xiv. 190 The *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. 103 Some, but not all, pewter will be found with a touch-mark. 1974 L. Koenig Little Girl iii. 34 A pewter tankard..seemed to demand examination. She..turned it over to study the touchmark. |
| 1763–6 W. Lewis Comm. Phil.-Techn. 124 Accustoming himself to compare the colours of a good set of *Touch needles. 1884 F. J. Britten Watch & Clockm. 266 Touch 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. 36 Down falls the Cock, up from the *Touch-pan flies A ruddy flash. |
| 1974 Physics Bull. June 225/2 One 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. 156 The 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. 449 Neither these, nor those of Cheltenham, will deflagrate or flash in *Touch-Paper. 1832 Miss Mitford Village Ser. v. 113 Why dost thou not fire?.. So please your worship, the wind hath extinguished the touch-paper. 1873 E. Spon Workshop Receipts Ser. i. 131/2 Touchpaper..placed..round the mouth of the firework, and twisted into a point. |
| 1778 Pryce Min. Cornub. 178 [The miners] have a *touch-pipe, that is, rest..half an hour to smoke a pipe. |
| 1508 Acc. Ld. High Treas. Scot. IV. 122 For vernesing of ane lang culveryn and gilting of the end of it and the *twich plaith. 1902 Welch Hist. Pewterers' Co. I. Introd. 1 The..inventories of the Company's goods show that touch-plates existed at an early date. |
| a 1618 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 29 The *Touch-point, otherwise called the point of concauitie. Ibid. 73 The 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 225/2 Spleens 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 [games] entail constant running, both in defence and attack, especially *touch rugby. |
| 1942 C. Milburn Diary 16 Dec. (1979) 161 He 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. 60/2 The 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. 78 A 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. 35 The 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. 5/3 The 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 dink n.2]. 1969 New Yorker 14 June 56/2 A loose, liberal, infuriating touch shot. |
| 1906 C. S. Sherrington Integrative Action of Nervous System ix. 324 The retina is thus a group of glorified ‘warm-spots,’ and the cochlea a group of glorified ‘*touch-spots’. 1927 Haldane & Huxley Animal Biol. v. 122 The fineness of discrimination for touch depends mainly on the closeness of touch-spots. 1968 D. F. Horrobin Med. Physiol. & Biochem. xxv. 150/2 There are touch spots, cold spots and warm spots, each particularly sensitive to one modality. |
| 1927 Haldane & Huxley Animal Biol. xii. 268 Most..of the group possess nerves, and at least scattered sense-organs for perceiving *touch-stimuli. |
| a 1860 Alb. Smith Lond. Med. Stud. (1861) 61 Crackers..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 122 American Telegraph and Telephone Company, New York... *Touch-Tone. For providing telephone communication service. 1970 O. Dopping Computers & Data Processing xi. 163 If 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. 112/3 The 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. 9/4 Touch-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. |
| [1897 in Story of Typewriter (1923) 113 Omaha has become the storm centre of the commotion over the touch method of typewriting.] 1947 K. Jaediker Tall, Dark & Dead viii. 117 All 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. 46 Many coppers had done touchtyping courses. |
| 1929 Telegr. & Telephone Jrnl. XVI. 13/1 Attention was concentrated upon touch-typing with the object of turning out highly-skilled *touch-typists. 1972 ‘J. & E. Bonett’ No Time to Kill vii. 90 I'm not a touch typist. Very few writers are. |
| 1644 Bulwer Chirol. 172 The grape of the Index [finger]..is..chiefe *Touch-warden to the King of the five senses. 1676 B. W[illis] Man. Goldsm. 30 The 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. 33 Blind 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. 46 The *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. |
2. Substantival phrases consisting
a. of the
vb. in combination with an
advb.:
touch-back (
Rugby Football), the act of touching the ground with the ball on or behind the player's own goal-line after it has been driven there by the opposing side; also, a similar action in some other ball games;
touch-last, a children's game,
= touch n. 1 g;
touch-up, an act of touching up (see
touch v. 34 a); a stroke added by way of improvement or finish; also, a slight incitement or reminder;
b. of the
vb. with object;
touch-no-wall,
-s,
Real Tennis: see
quots.| 1891 W. Camp Amer. Football 172 A *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. 11 This used to be an automatic touchback and the ball was placed in play on the 20-yard line. 1976 Webster's Sports Dict. 455/2 Touchback. Speedball. A situation in which the ball is driven over the end line by an offensive player without scoring. |
| 1825 Jamieson Suppl. II. 568/2 Tig, a game among children, in which one strikes another and runs off... This game in S[cotland] is the same with *Touchlast in E[ngland]. 1902 [see he pers. 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. 29 He 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. |
| b. 1777 [T. Swift] Gamblers i. 221 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) 166 When 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 160 Touch-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. |
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Add:
[1.] [b.] touch tablet Computing, a touchpad which interprets the position of a finger or other object in contact with it in the same way as an electronic mouse on a conventional tablet or other surface.
| [1975 Internat. Jrnl. Man-Machine Stud. VII. 657 In 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/6 A 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. |