Word.ws English Dictionary

touched wood

touched wood is the simple past and past participle of touch wood.

Meaning of touch wood

Verb

touch wood (third-person singular simple present touches wood, present participle touching wood, simple past and past participle touched wood)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK) To make contact with wood to avert bad luck, in accordance with a folk practice.
    • Touching wood possibly has reference to (a) the cross, or (b) the altar rails in days when criminals could take sanctuary in churches.1930, John D. Stephenson, chapter I, in The Structure of English from Sentence to Essay, page 105
    Synonyms:
    knock on wood

See all 2 meanings of touch wood

Questions about touched wood

What is touched wood the simple past and past participle of?
Touched wood is the simple past and past participle of touch wood.

Words near touched wood in the dictionary

  1. touched someone's robe
  2. touched the hem of someone's garment
  3. touched the hem of someone's robe
  4. touched up
  5. touched upon
  6. touched wood
  7. touchedness
  8. touchedst
  9. Toucheng
  10. toucher
  11. toucherism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: touched wood (page history and authors); touch wood (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “touched wood.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/touched_wood. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.