Will's word of the week

The world of sports is one of the great factories of new words, and while many of us probably don’t think of fencing as a sport per se, it has produced at least one handy word for our vernacular: touché. Yes, that’s right, as in “Touché!” I must thank my good friend Sarah Jeglum for bringing it to my attention.

Touché is an interjection used to call attention to a hit in a fencing match, or the light-hearted acknowledgement of a legitimate point by a conversational partner (as in “Touché! I do wear pink eyeliner …”). It is the past participle of the verb toucher (the French form is touchier), meaning, not surprisingly, “to hit or wound in fencing,” according to the American Heritage Dictionary, or “one who or that which touches,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Both come from the same etymologically murky root as the word touch, which probably has early Romantic origins as an onomatopoeic imitation of “knock.”

Touché first appeared in the early 20th century in written English, with a good example found in 1912 in Trent’s Last Case, by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, with the line, “‘Touché,’ Trent said, with a dry smile.” Bentley was an Oxford law-student-turned-journalist and the best friend of G.K. Chesterton, one of my favorite authors. Bentley is known for the aforementioned detective-story spoof, and for inventing the “Clerihew,” or short, rhyming “baseless biographies,” an example of which can be found in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: “Sir Humphrey Davy/Abominated gravy./He lived in the odium/Of having discovered Sodium.”

The idea of this witty refrain is to poke fun at too-serious poetry and biography.

But returning from that particular rabbit trail, the first example of toucher (in the literal sense as someone who touches) in modern, written English can be found way back in 1435, in Richard Misyn’s The Fire of Love, with the line, “Qwhils e hart of e toucher in dyuers desires is takyn …” (please be patient with the olde spellinge). Misyn was a clergyman, writer and hermit who found time to write and translate (sometimes both) on the side.

In the figurative sense, a good example of an early usage can be found in 1709, in Mary de la Riviére Manley’s Secret Memoirs of Several Persons of Quality from the New Atalantis, with the line, “A Heart truly touch’d, values nothing in comparison with the Toucher.” Riviere was a colorful English writer who used romance as a genre to attack the wrongdoings of British politicians.

So feel free to shout “Touché!” the next time you debate something with a friend, secure in the knowledge that you now know a little bit more about where the word comes from. Please also feel free to send your word ideas; we are down to our last word of the quarter, so send me some good tips. Until next time, cheers!