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Reach Out and Touch the Meaning of Tactile
Tactile has many relatives in English, from the oft-synonymous tangible to familiar words like intact, tact, tangent, contingent, and even entire. All of these can be traced back to the Latin verb tangere, meaning “to touch.” Tactile was adopted by English speakers in the early 1600s (possibly by way of the French tactile) from the Latin adjective tactilis (“tangible”). In light of tactile having tangere for a touchstone, its dual senses of “perceptible by touch” and “of, relating to, or being the sense of touch” are perfectly sensible. Since the advent of film, television, and, ahem, touchscreens, a new sense also appears to be developing, as tactile is increasingly used to suggest that something visual is particularly evocative or suggestive of a certain texture.
Examples of tactile in a Sentence
Oliver Sacks, New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2002
There is a tactile and therefore somatic dimension to stroking the chalk that keeps the artist in constant, responsible and responsive touch with his emerging creation.
—Jed Perl, New Republic, 17 June 2002
The keyboard has good tactile feedback, and the touch pad is responsive without being too twitchy.
—Bruce Brown, PC Magazine, 20 Feb. 2001
… nothing prepared me for the tactile reality of the original volumes, leaf after carefully written leaf over which his hand had travelled …
—Edmund Morris, New Yorker, 16 Jan. 1995
Near midday the heat of the sun bounced up from the bare patches of soil to hit with an almost tactile force.
—Edward O. Wilson, Smithsonian, October 1984
The thick brushstrokes give the painting a tactile quality.
Cassandra Runyon, The Conversation, 22 Mar. 2024
This can manifest as a longing for tactile sensations, including hugs, cuddles, hand-holding or other forms of physical intimacy.
—Mark Travers, Forbes, 18 Feb. 2024
It’s adorned with tactile patterns and the image of an animal resembling a horse.
—Sonja Anderson, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Jan. 2024
Gabriel tried to distract himself with the tactile sensations of farming: wet dirt stiffening his hands and massing under his nails; cold creeping through his jeans and long underwear; humidity swelling through his sinuses.
—Lily Meyer, The Atlantic, 25 Mar. 2024
Textures of Spring Fashion: From woolly tweeds to smooth silk, tactile fabrics make for a highly sensational season.
—New York Times, 24 Mar. 2024
To demonstrate a practical application for the new electronics, the researchers built an 8-square-millimeter tactile sensor array that could stick onto a human finger and read Braille writing.
—IEEE Spectrum, 17 Mar. 2024
Even beyond childhood, through touch sensations and tactile perceptions of temperature, texture and vibration transmitted to the brain, fingers are essential to how most people contact and interact with the external world throughout life.
—Sabrina Sholts, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Mar. 2024
Gold’s attention to texture and tactile detail asks audiences to lean in; the play’s early scenes foster an engrossing intimacy later blasted apart by civic controversy.
—Naveen Kumar, Washington Post, 19 Mar. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tactile.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near tactile
Cite this Entry
“Tactile.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tactile. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
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Medical Definition
tactile
2 of 2 noun
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