Touched

How to spell touched

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce touched

What does touched mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of touch: made physical contact with something or someone.
2. adjectiveAffected with gratitude or tender emotion by someone's kindness or gesture.

Touched in a sentence

• verb

  She touched the radiator to check whether the heating had come on.

• adjective

  She was deeply touched by the cards her colleagues had left on her desk.

• verb

  The surveyor touched the cracked wall and felt the damp plaster.

• adjective

  He felt genuinely touched that the whole team remembered his retirement.

Where does touched come from?

Language of origin: French

The base verb 'touch' came into English in the 1200s from Old French 'tochier' (also spelled 'touchier'), meaning 'to make contact with' or 'to strike lightly'. That French verb descended from a Vulgar Latin form '*toccare', meaning 'to knock' or 'to strike', which is widely thought to be imitative in origin, echoing the sound of a light tap or knock. Over the centuries the sense softened from striking to gentle contact and then spread into figurative uses, such as being emotionally moved or being slightly affected in the mind. The past form 'touched' simply adds the regular '-ed' ending, but note that the 'ch' is voiceless and the ending sounds like a 't', which is the small trap: writers must remember to keep the silent-looking '-ed' rather than spelling it 'toucht'. The same '*toccare' root also gave Italian 'toccare' and the musical term 'toccata', a piece meant to show off the player's touch on the keys.

How the word is built

• touch (to make contact, from Old French tochier)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)