Touchous

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Ken Krumpler here.

Hi, Ken. How are you doing?

I’m doing well. How are you doing?

Great. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Ken.

Thank you very much.

What can we help you with today?

I’m here in Richmond, but like so many others here, my parents are from elsewhere.

They’re from down in eastern North Carolina and learned the three R’s, reading, writing, and the road to Richmond.

Richmond, Virginia, right?

Yes, ma’am.

And so with that, they brought a lot of their colloquialisms up with them.

And one, I never heard it outside of the eastern North Carolina area, one that my dad used, that if you had an injury or pulled a muscle, and it was a couple of three days later and it was still sore, he would refer to it, possibly best to use it in a sentence, be careful of my hand there where I twisted it the other day, it’s still right touches.

Right touches. And that means what exactly?

It’s still sore.

Still sore.

It’s still tender.

Yeah.

Oh, you know that, Martha.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, from North Carolina, yeah.

Yeah, you’ve got roots there, right?

Yeah, definitely heard it there.

No, roots in North Carolina.

But yeah, touches, it means what you might think it means, that it’s painful to the touch.

It’s physically sensitive.

Oh, I see. That’s logical.

Yeah, and it goes back to Ireland and northern England.

I mean, this is a great relic of the migrations there.

How widespread is it?

It’s in the south, South Midlands, across the south there.

Okay, very good.

Here and there, yeah.

So write tetchus means I’ve got an arm that pains me, don’t make it worse.

Mm—

And sometimes it’s tetchus, T-E-T-C-H-I-O-U-S, or tetchus.

But the version that you use, Ken, is the most common.

Okay.

Like I said, outside of the family in that part of the country, I’d never heard it widely used.

And when I use it around here, just, you know, we all learn from our parents.

When I use it around here, I get more than one confused look.

But they don’t regard you as touches.

I mean, it can be emotionally sensitive or irritable, easily upset, that kind of thing.

Oh, is it like touchy or touchy as well?

Yeah, it’s probably related to that.

We’re not completely sure about its etymology, but probably.

Or at least people associate it with that.

Okay, I never had associated it with an emotional hurt.

It was always a physical.

So I never heard it that way.

Yeah, both ways.

Well, there you go, Ken.

All right. Well, thank you ever so much.

Thanks for calling. I really appreciate it.

Okay. Thank you.

Take care. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye.

Yeah, my toes so touchy I can hardly walk.

Get those legs up on a stool, lady.

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