touchy-feely
"touchy-feely" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“touchy-feely” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Having a fondness for physical contact with other people, especially to an excessive degree.
Corpus desk
Index EN-touchy-feely · touchy-feely · English
touchy-feely · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | touchy-feely |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “touchy-feely” in English
Rare enough to double-check
touchy-feely is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
No generated misspelling entries exist for touchy-feely in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is touchy-feely, spelled T-O-U-C-H-Y---F-E-E-L-Y.
Definition
- 1Having a fondness for physical contact with other people, especially to an excessive degree.
- 2Driven by intuition or emotion, with a connotation of de-emphasis of rational thought or logic.
- 3Appealing to emotion, sympathy, or romance.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how touchy-feely appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
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.”
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.