Other forms: touched, touching, touches
To touch something is to put your hand or fingers on it. A hand laid on a dog's head, a fingertip pressed to the radiator to see whether the heating is on, the sign in the museum that says do not touch.
Things touch each other without any hands involved: branches touching a roof, a plane's wheels touching the runway. Touch a person and you may mean their feelings rather than their arm — her letter touched him, where touched means moved. The noun does several jobs: touch is the sense you feel with, a touch of salt is a small amount, and a nice touch is a small thoughtful detail somebody added. Touch ON a subject and you mention it briefly before moving away. Then the fixed phrases: keep in touch and get in touch are about contact between people, lose touch is what happens when you stop, and touch and go means the result was uncertain and could have gone badly.
1verbtouchTo put your hand or fingers on something.~51%
“Do not touch the pan — it is still hot.”
2verbcontactTo be in contact with something, with no space in between.~17%
“The branches touch the roof whenever the wind gets up.”
3verbmoveTo affect someone's feelings, especially with kindness or sadness.~2%
“Her letter touched him more than he expected it to.”
4verbmentionTo mention a subject briefly.~2%
“The report touches on funding but says almost nothing about staff.”
5nounfeelThe sense that lets you feel things through your skin.~26%
“Cold metal is unmistakable to the touch.”
6nounsmallA small amount of something, or a small detail added to finish something off.~2%
“The flowers on the table were a nice touch.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 11 of them on a sense (3 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
touch is a physical action.
Touch went abroad and came home again. It reached English from Old French tochier, but French had it from Frankish tukkon, to knock, strike, touch — a Germanic word — from Proto-Germanic *tukkona, to tug, grab, and behind that the Proto-Indo-European root *dewk-, to draw, pull, lead. It pushed out the native English word rinen, and it is a doublet of tuck.
Proto-Indo-European
*dewk-
Old French
tochier — to touch
Middle English
touchen
English, today
touch
From Middle English touchen, tochen, from Old French tochier (“to touch”) (whence Modern French toucher; compare French doublet toquer (“to offend, bother, harass”)), from Vulgar Latin tuccō (“to knock, strike, offend”), from Frankish tukkōn (“to knock, strike, touch”), from Proto-Germanic tukkōną (“to tug, grab, grasp”), from Proto-Indo-European dewk- (“to draw, pull, lead”). Largely displaced native rinen, from hrīnan (whence Modern English rine). Doublet of tuck. 2 Cognate with Old High German zochhōn, zuhhōn (“to grasp, take, seize, snatch”) (whence German zucken (“to jerk, flinch”)), German Low German tucken, tocken (“to fidget, twitch, pull up, entice, throb, knock, repeatedly tap”), Middle Dutch tocken, tucken (“to touch, entice”) (whence Dutch tokkelen (“to strum, pluck”)), Old English tucian, tūcian (“to disturb, mistreat”) (whence Modern tuck). Compare also Old High German tokkōn, tockōn (“to abut, collide”). More at tuck.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA