touched
touched Lexical Profile
touched Game Scores & Validity
• adjective
Feeling gratitude, sympathy, or warm emotional appreciation as a result of someone's kindness or a moving experience.
"She was deeply touched by the thoughtful handwritten letters from her former students."
Slightly mentally deranged, eccentric, or foolish (informal or dated).
"The villagers thought the old hermit was a bit touched because he talked to the trees."
Word Nuance & Usage
In the emotional sense of feeling grateful or moved, 'touched' is almost exclusively used predicatively (e.g., 'she felt deeply touched'), whereas 'touching' is used attributively to describe the thing causing the emotion (e.g., 'a touching gesture').
• Rhymes for touched
Word Origin & Etymology
Formed from the past participle of the verb 'touch' (from Old French 'tochier'). The figurative sense of being emotionally moved dates to the 14th century, while the colloquial sense of being slightly mad emerged in the 17th century from the folk belief that eccentric people had been 'touched' in the head by supernatural forces.