- touch#
- touch vb 1 Touch, feel, palpate, handle, paw can all mean to lay the hand or fingers or an equally sensitive part of the body upon so as to get or produce a sensation often in examination or exploration.Touch usually stresses the act which leads to or produces the sensation or the resulting knowledge, but it does not invariably imply the act of placing a bodily part in contact with the object considered for it may suggest the use of an instrument which induces a specific sensation or produces another sensation (as that of sounds heard){
touch an iron lightly with a wet finger to see if it is hot enough for ironing
}{touch the strings of a violin lightly with the bow
}{if you touch the baby he will awaken
}or it may suggest an immaterial contact{it is essential that the College . . . be strengthened in its enduring task of touching creatively the lives of those many who will study here— N. M. Pusey
}Feel stresses the sensation induced or produced; usually it suggests a sensation on the part of the person touching but may connote a sensation on the part of the one touched{come near . . . that I may feel thee, my son— Gen 27:21
}{the natural philosopher concerned himself with almost anything that he could see or hear or feel— Darrow
}{all that the saints and mystics say about the irradiation of the whole personality by the felt presence of the Holy Spirit— Inge
}Although touch and feel often connote examination or exploration, they do not throw the emphasis on that end; on the other hand, palpate (as well as the noun palpation), especially in medical use, stresses the feeling of the surface of a body, usually a human body, as a means of discovering the condition of organs that cannot be seen{the doctor palpated the swollen mass and said no bone was broken
}{examine the condition of the abdominal organs by palpation
}{having probed and prodded and palpated that tortured . . . flesh until it was as familiar as his own— Styron
}Handle (see also HANDLE, TREAT) implies a laying of the hands or fingers upon so as to get the feel of a thing, or a taking up into the hands so as to determine its qualities (as of weight, condition, or finish) by the sense of touch{she insists upon handling cloth before she buys it
}{handle this fur and feel its softness yet strength
}{handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh— Lk 24:39
}Paw implies a touching or stroking with the hand, often but not always involving the connotation of getting or stimulating a sensation; the term is often used when the action is clumsy or offensive{the inspectors . . . pawing through his papers, consulting dusty books of regulations—W. S. Burroughs
}{kept trying to kiss and hug and paw her— Wouk
}Analogous words: examine, inspect, *scrutinize: investigate (see corresponding noun at INQUIRY)2 *affect, influence, impress, strike, swayAnalogous words: arouse, *stir: excite, stimulate, quicken (see PROVOKE): *injure, harm, damage, hurt, impair3 approach, rival, *match, equalAnalogous words: feeling, sense, *sensation, sensibility: tangibleness, palpableness (see corresponding adjectives at PERCEPTIBLE): *impact, impingement, shock, clash2 Touch, suggestion, suspicion, soupçon, tincture, tinge, shade, smack, spice, dash, vein, strain, streak are comparable when they mean a perceptible trace of something foreign, extraneous, or peculiar. Touch can suggest an impression left on someone or something by or as if by contact with another, but in general it implies little more than an appreciable trace{in the air was a touch of frost— Galsworthy
}{he was a very active lad, fair-haired, with a touch of the Dane or Norwegian about him— D. H. Lawrence
}{Occasionally the wrinkled serenity of her face became a touch grim—Styron
}Suggestion implies an outward sign that is just enough to give one a hint or an inkling of the presence or existence of something{his voice conveyed a suggestion of fear
}{the taste of the fowl delicately dominant over the tart suggestion of Burgundy— Wouk
}Suspicion and soupçon differ little from suggestion, but they tend to imply a fainter trace requiring more delicate perception or evoking less certainty{tea with a suspicion of brandy
}{add a soupçon of red pepper
}{just a suspicion ... of saturnine or sarcastic humor— A. W. Ward
}{a soupcçn of army rank had slipped . . . insidiously into his voice— Salinger
}Tincture, tinge, and shade are terms used primarily in describing color. Tincture and tinge usually imply an admixture with something that gives the thing affected a faint cast or an appearance suggestive of a lightly suffused coloring{what he said had plausibility and perhaps a tincture of sincerity— Hackett
}{both young men were Whigs of a radical tincture— Current History
}{a subjective tinge entered into the nineteenth-century description of nature— Jeans
}{eyes that . . . had some tinge of the oriental— Edmund Wilson
}Shade implies enough of a trace to suggest the smallest possible degree of some quality; it usually derives its implications from the meaning of shade as a gradation in the darkening of a color{he smiled; in that smile there was a shade of patronage— Galsworthy
}{eyes that were too small and a shade too close together— Dahl
}{the distinction between French plums and stewed prunes is . . . not to be overlooked by those sensitive to these nice shades— Sackville-West
}Smack, spice, and dash are used primarily in relation to the stimulation of the sense of taste. Smack suggests a trace which is pronounced enough or decided enough for one to savor it{the Saxon names of places, with the pleasant, wholesome smack of the soil in them— Arnold
}Spice and dash suggest a slight admixture or infusion, especially such as gives zest, relish, or pungency{there was a spice of obstinacy about Miss Dale— Trollope
}{a king of England should have a spice of the devil in his composition— Smollett
}{he is a man with a dash of genius in him— Arnold
}{his ancestry was chiefly English, with some Scotch and a dash of both French and Dutch— Kellogg
}Vein, strain, and streak all suggest linearity and imply continuity though not necessarily evident continuity to the thing, usually a quality or condition, so designated. Vein applies to a trace that runs through a personality, a work, or a movement in the manner of a vein so that it lies below or within the substance or character of the thing as a whole and occasionally shows on the surface or crops out{in Swift he discovered an inimitable vein of irony— Johnson
}{he had always had a vein of childish obstinacy— M. E. Freeman
}Strain and streak can both denote a distinctive characteristic that runs through and modifies the whole of which it is a part{throughout the speech . . . ran a curious strain, as though he himself were dazed at the fix he had got himself into— Shirer
}They are used especially of a personal characteristic that is clearly distinguishable from or even contrasts sharply with the rest of one's qualities{a strain of eccentricity, amounting in some cases almost to insanity— L. P. Smith
}{the streak of extreme stubbornness . . . was both his strength and his misfortune— Galbraith
}{a streak of Indian blood in him— Long
}Analogous words: *trace, vestige: contamination, pollution, defilement, tainting (see corresponding verbs at CONTAMINATE): *impression, impress, imprint, stamp, print
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
