You can think of touching as touch caught in the act: something is reaching out and making contact. In one direction the contact is with your feelings — a small kindness brushes your heart and you go quiet. In the other, the contact is with a subject — a letter or a rule reaches out and lands on a topic, so it is 'touching' that matter. Same reaching movement, different thing being reached.
From the word’s history
Wiktionary gives touching as Middle English touchynge, that is touch + -ing. The modern uses all keep the picture of contact that the base verb carries.
來源說 touching 來自中古英文 touchynge，也就是 touch 加上 -ing。今天的各種用法，字面上都還留著 touch 那個「碰」的畫面。
Wiktionary, entry "touching" (kaikki snapshot kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:909516514): "From Middle English touchynge, equivalent to touch + -ing."
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料6 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
touchingadj詞源 1/ˈtʌt͡ʃɪŋ/
- 1
Provoking sadness and pity; that can cause sadness or heartbreak among witnesses to a sad event or situation.
- a touching story
- 2
In direct contact with.
touchingprep詞源 1/ˈtʌt͡ʃɪŋ/
- 1
Regarding; concerning.
- Now as touching things offered vnto idoles, wee know that wee all haue knowledge.
- Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible ; for my first vague disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea, became almost a perturbation.
touchingnoun詞源 2/ˈtʌt͡ʃɪŋ/
- 1
The act by which something is touched.
- But we can also take a more analytical attitude to these displays, interpreting the movements as no more than approachings, touchings, and departings with no implication that one shape caused the other to move.
- 2
A snack served with alcoholic drinks in an informal environment.
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。