[f. as prec. + -NESS.] The quality of being touchy.
1. Sensitiveness of temper, irritability, testiness.
1653. Gauden, Hierasp., To Rdr. 26. Nor is he ignorant of the touchinesse, and roughnesse … of many mens spirits in these times.
1660. Hickeringill, Jamaica (1661), 96. Their discontents had heated them to so (tinder-like) a Touchinesse, that they were ready to take fire on all occasions.
1828. Lights & Shades, II. 52. She is known only by her one absorbing quality of touchiness, and is dreaded and hated accordingly.
1863. Hartford Courant, 21 Feb., 2/2. Considering the known schemes of the [French] Emperor, and his touchiness where he chooses to be touchy, such language may result in the very foreign war it prognosticates.
2. Ticklishness, precariousness.
1648. Eikon Bas., iii. 14. My friends resented it as a motion … not guided with such discretion, as the touchinesse of those times required.
3. Painting, etc.: see TOUCHY 4.
1813. Examiner, 8 Feb., 90/2. The heads and hands have in general a rich touchiness of pen2cil. Ibid., 1 March, 141/1. The trees … have perhaps too minute a touchiness of foliage.
1821. New Monthly Mag., III. 391. It is too much limited to the outline of the body: it wants a good filling up, a breaking and touchiness in the intermediate spaces.
