sb. [phrase used as sb.]
1. Name for two different kinds of plants with seed-vessels which burst at a touch. † a. The Squirting Cucumber: see CUCUMBER 3. Obs.
1597. Gerarde, Herbal, II. cccxxvii. 766. Cucumis asininus. Wilde Cucumber…. Called … wilde Cucumber … and Touch me not.
1611. in Cotgr., s.v. Coucombre.
1760. J. Lee, Introd. Bot., App. 330. Touch me not, Momordica.
b. The Yellow Balsam (Impatiens Noli-tangere), or other species of Impatiens, the ripe capsules of which split open with a jerk on being touched.
1659. Gauden, Tears Ch., ***ij. Presbytery seeming like the plant called Touch me not, which flies in the face, and breaks in the fingers of those that presse it.
1760. J. Lee, Introd. Bot., App. 330. Touch me not, Impatiens.
1885. Hornaday, 2 Yrs. in Jungle, xxv. 300. A bed of touch-me-nots took me back like a flash to the terrace flower-beds at college.
1888. Harper’s Mag., Dec., 153/2. The ‘touch-me-not’ or ‘snapweed’ of the loitering school-boy, with its touchy, jumping pods, popping even at a hard look or breath.
2. A name for the disease Lupus.
1860. Mayne, Expos. Lex., Touch-me-not, common name for the disease Noli me tangere.
3. gen. A person or thing that must not be touched; in quot., a forbidden topic.
1893. Daily News, 8 May, 5/5. Military matters … are a ‘touch-me-not’ here.
b. attrib. or as adj.
1852. Thackeray, Esmond, III. iv. The saucy little beauty carried her head with a toss … and assumed a touch-me-not air, which all her friends very good-humouredly bowed to.
1880. ‘Ouida,’ Moths, 43. Just the old-fashioned, prudish, open-air, touch-me-not Englishwoman.
Hence Touch-me-not-ish a. [-ISH1], having a ‘touch-me-not’ character; whence Touch-me-not-ishness (nonce-wd.). Cf. stand-off-ish.
1837. Dickens, Pickw., viii. There was a dignity in the air, a touch-me-not-ishness in the walk, a majesty in the eye of the spinster aunt.
1930. Dorothy Dow, in Warren (PA) Times Mirror, 2 May, 4/1. I would be a little touch-me-not-ish with boys.
