very nearly. To touch and go (old coaching: cf. nautical phrase, to touch bottom = to graze the shallows) = (1) to drive close enough to touch and escape injury (Hotten: a trick of the old jarveys to show their skill); hence (2) applied to anything within an ace of ruin: cf. quot. 1549, s.v. Touch (phrases).
1831. Ferrier, Destiny, iii. So it was with Glenroy and his lady. It had been touch-and-go with them for many a day, and now, from less to more, from bad to worse, it ended in a threatened separation.
1860. Sala, Baddington Peerage, i. 188. It was a near toucher, though.
1865. Dickens, Mutual Friend, iii. 18. And there we are in four minutes' time, as near as a toucher. Ibid. [Annandale]. The next instant the hind coach passed my engine by a near shave. It was the nearest touch I ever saw.
1883. Century Mag., xxxvi. 127. It was touch and go to that degree that they couldn't come near him.
1887. St. James's Gazette, 25 Oct. Herr Ludwig had a touch-and-go journey before he caught the Servia.
1888. Academy, 3 Mar., 148. The illusive touch-and-go manner.
1889. Oliphant, Poor Gentleman, xli. It was as Rochford felt, touch and go, very delicate work with Sir Edward.
Touched, adv. (colloquial).—Slightly
crazy; mentally impaired.
Hence touch, subs. = a kink, a
twist: cf. Old Eng. touch = to
infect, blemish, taint.
1704. Steele, Lying Lover, v. 1. Pray mind him not, his brain is touch'd. Ibid. (c. 1709), Tatler, 178. This touch in the brain of the British subject is certainly owing to the reading newspapers.
1705. Vanbrugh, Confederacy, v. 2. Madam, you see master's a little—touched, that's all.
1897. Marshall, Pomes, 86. There were some who called her 'touched,' because she told them plump and plain that she wasn't going to be a fellow's chattel.
1899. Whiteing, John St., ix. He is not to be judged by their law; he has been touched.
Toucher. See Touch-and-go.
Touch-my-nob, subs. (rhyming).—A
shilling; a bob (q.v.); see
Rhino.
Touch-piece, subs. phr. (old).—A
good-luck piece given by the
sovereign to those they 'touched'
for the cure of scrofula, or king's
evil.
1882. Athenæum, 28 Oct. Before the reign of Charles II. no coins were struck specially for touch-pieces, the gold 'angel' having been used for the purpose. The touch-pieces are all similar in design. Those of the Pretenders, however, which were struck abroad, are of much better work than those made in England. . . . These touch-pieces (all of them perforated) are curious relics of a superstition which had existed for many centuries, and was only stamped out on the accession of the Brunswick dynasty.
Touchy, adj. (old and still colloquial).—1.
Irritable, apt to take
offence, all 'angles and corners'
[i.e., tetchy]. [Johnson: 'a low
word.'] Hence touchiness =
sensitiveness, peevishness.
d. 1529. Skelton, Works. [Oliphant, New Eng., i. 373. The verb touch gets the new sense of irritare; . . . hence our touchy.]
1605. King Leir and his Three Daughters. She breeds yong bones, And that is it makes her so tutchy sure.
1611. Cotgrave, Dict., s.v. Chatouilleux a la poincte. Quick on the spurre . . . tichy, that will not endure to be touched.
1611. Fletcher, Maid's Trag., iii. Y'are touchie without all cause.
1628. Earle, Microcos., 'A Blunt Man.' Hee is teachy himself, and seldome to his own abuses replyes but with his Fists.
1648. Gauden, Eikon Basilike. My friends resented it as a motion not guided with such discretion as the touchiness of those times required.
