touchy-feely

touchy-feely adjective: having a fondness for physical contact with other people, especially to an excessive degree.

Adjective

touchy-feely (comparative more touchy-feely, superlative most touchy-feely)

(informal) Having a fondness for physical contact with other people, especially to an excessive degree.
- My last boyfriend was a lovely guy, but I dumped him because he was too touchy-feely with me in public.
- Kühnel’s wife, Berta, began by asking everyone to join hands. […] When I asked her later what she made of the exercise, Hellar told me: “First of all, I’m not a good-feelings, touchy-feely kind of person.”2009 April 16, Jon Mooallem, quoting Gretchen Hellar, “The End Is Near! (Yay!)”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
(derogatory, idiomatic, usually) Driven by intuition or emotion, with a connotation of de-emphasis of rational thought or logic.
- He preferred the clarity of science and left the touchy-feely stuff to others.
(derogatory, idiomatic, usually) Appealing to emotion, sympathy, or romance.
- I think the movie had too much touchy-feely nonsense and not enough action.

touchy-feely (uncountable)

Physical contact, typically sexual, and usually inappropriate or unwanted.
- Why is it that, when straight men are touched, it is an affront worthy of outrage and police investigation, yet a woman's being the subject of a bar-wide game of touchy-feely is par for the course?Kyle Hoffman, letter in Valley Advocate, quoted 1979 February 10 by Allen Young, “Living In The Country”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 28, page 8
- When I was wrestling, females were just appearing on the scene. I loved my coach's position. "If they want to wrestle with the boys, sure, I will put our wrestlers on the mat for some touchy feely. (Paraphrased, but not by much)2025 February 13, @ZekeCares, Twitter

স্বজ্ঞা, আবেগ দ্বারা চালিত, আবেগ, সহানুভূতি, রোমান্সের প্রতি আকর্ষিত, শারীরিক যোগাযোগ

comparative	more touchy-feely
superlative	most touchy-feely

What does touchy-feely mean?: Touchy-feely means having a fondness for physical contact with other people, especially to an excessive degree.
What is touchy-feely in Bengali?: Touchy-feely in Bengali is স্বজ্ঞা, আবেগ দ্বারা চালিত, আবেগ. See Touchy-feely meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is touchy-feely?: Touchy-feely can be an adjective or a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: touchy-feely (page history and authors); touchy-feely (Bengali Wiktionary) (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-touchy-feely.ogg.

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