touched

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of touch.

   Her speech touched on the budget without offering many details.

   The fragile exhibits must not be touched by visitors.

   Note

   A regular -ed form, so one spelling covers both "she touched the glass" and "the exhibits must not be touched." The passive is where it can blur into the "moved" adjective: I was touched may report contact or a feeling. Degree words settle it. Very touched and more touched can only be the adjective, since the participle of physical contact does not grade.

2. 2
   adjective

   Moved emotionally, especially feeling gratitude or sympathy, in response to something kind or affecting.

   The retiring teacher was visibly touched by the standing ovation.

   I was deeply touched that strangers had donated so generously.

   Similarmoved, affected

   Oppositeunmoved, unaffected, indifferent

   Note

   The feeling usually takes one of two constructions: touched by something, or touched that something happened. In Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Jo is "more touched by her father's words than by any amount of praise," and Disraeli's Sybil (1845) uses about instead. It grades like any adjective (deeply touched, more touched), so it reads as a state of feeling. That sets it apart from the past participle of touch.

3. 3
   adjective

   Somewhat mentally unbalanced or eccentric; not entirely sound in the mind.

   Everyone in the village agreed the old recluse was a bit touched.

   Years of isolation had left him slightly touched, muttering at the walls.

   Similarcrazy, unbalanced, eccentric, dotty, batty

   Oppositesane, rational

   Note

   Here the mind, not the heart, has been touched, and the word almost always arrives softened: a bit touched, touched in the head. Zadie Smith's NW (2012) hears it as Irish usage: "Touched, the Irish say." Watch the preposition. Dostoevsky's translator writes "a bit touched on the subject of lawyers," meaning unbalanced about one topic. That is not the verb touched on, meaning mentioned briefly.

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