Word.ws English Dictionary

touch-me-not-ishness

touch-me-not-ishness noun: the quality of being touch-me-not-ish.

Noun

touch-me-not-ishness (uncountable)

  1. The quality of being touch-me-not-ish.
    • The young ladies were pretty, their manners winning, their dispositions unexceptionable; but there was a dignity in the air, a touch-me-not-ish-ness in the walk, a majesty in the eye of the spinster aunt, to which, at their time of life they could lay no claim, which distinguished her from any...1836, Charles Dickens, chapter VIII, in The Pickwick Papers
    • The consequence of this training persisted in for a series of years without the least deviation enables the serene olympian to mount the witness stand with the perfect composure and touch-me-not-ish-ness that belongs to the elect.1893 February, Frank S. Rice, “The Medical Expert as a Witness”, in Columbia Law Times, volume VI, number 5, New York: The Columbia Law Times Publishing Company, page 128

Synonyms of touch-me-not-ishness

Origin of touch-me-not-ishness

From touch-me-not-ish + -ness.

Questions about touch-me-not-ishness

What does touch-me-not-ishness mean?
Touch-me-not-ishness means the quality of being touch-me-not-ish.
What part of speech is touch-me-not-ishness?
Touch-me-not-ishness is a noun.

Words near touch-me-not-ishness in the dictionary

  1. touch-in-goals
  2. touch-mark
  3. touch-marks
  4. touch-me-not
  5. touch-me-not-ish
  6. touch-me-not-ishness
  7. touch-me-nots
  8. touch-move rule
  9. touch-needle
  10. touch-needles
  11. touch-paper

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: touch-me-not-ishness (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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