Definition of "touch" []

• To cause or permit a part of the body, especially the hand or fingers, to come in contact with so as to feel: reached out and touched the smooth stone. (verb-transitive)
• To bring something into light contact with: touched the sore spot with a probe. (verb-transitive)
• To bring (one thing) into light contact with something else: grounded the radio by touching a wire to it; touching fire to a fuse. (verb-transitive)
• To press or push lightly; tap: touched a control to improve the TV picture; touched 19 on the phone to get room service. (verb-transitive)
• To lay hands on in violence: I never touched him! (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It seemed to take him a long time to touch bottom, and when he had, he wondered if _touch_ was quite the word."
• "By means of the nerves terminating in the touch corpuscles, the skin serves as the _organ of touch_, or feeling"
• ""So brilliant," said she, "so short-lived, as my friend Lady Emmeline K---- once said, 'London wit is like gas, which lights at a touch, and at a touch can be extinguished;'" and Lady Davenant concluded with a compliment to him who was known to have this "_touch and go_" of good conversation to perfection."