Untouchable

a. [UN-¹ 7 b.]

  1.  Incapable of being touched; immaterial.

1567.  Jewell, Def. Apol., 239. Theophylacte saithe, The Body of Christe is Eaten; but the Godheade is not Eaten: bicause it is vntoucheable, and vncomprehensible vnto our senses.

1611.  Cotgr., Immateriel,… impalpable, vntouchable.

  absol.  1833.  S. Austin, Char. Goethe, I. 185. Differentializing the Unchangeable and Untouchable.

  b.  Beyond the reach of touch.

1622.  G. G., Creat. Praysing God, 33. The vntouchable height of his [sc. God’s] glory.

1886.  J. Parker, Apost. Life, II. 169. With the heavens above it, hell below it, an untouchable horizon round about it.

1890.  Hall Caine, Bondman, III. i. Seas beneath of an untouchable depth.

  c.  fig. Unapproachable, unrivaled.

1867.  E. Yates, Forlorn Hope, xv. A worthy woman, untouchable in Mangnall, devoted to the backboard. Ibid. (1884), Recoll., I. 189. In his day untouchable as a romantic actor.

  2.  Exempt from touch; that one may not touch.

1607.  S. Collins, Serm. (1608), 46. Euery mans conscience is as free and as vntouchable as anothers before God, one price was paid for all.

1647.  Trapp, Comm. Jas. iii. 7. Sons of Belial, untamable, untractable, untouchable.

1661.  Feltham, Resolves, II. lxvi. 327. Were not their Persons Sacred, that is, by the Laws of God and Man, untouchable as to prejudice.

1737.  Gentl. Mag., VII. 35/1. Her Majesty’s Foot hitch’d in the Stirrup, and the Horse dragg’d her along…, but the untouchable Foot retain’d the grave Spaniards from intermedling in so delicate an Affair.

1879.  J. Hingston, Austral. Abroad, ix. 101. The graves … are held as sacred and untouchable by the present owners.

  b.  spec. That cannot legally be interfered with or made use of.

1734.  Swift, in Mrs. Delany, Life & Corr. (1861), I. 524. I hope the young lady has an untouchable settlement.

1815.  Zeluca, I. 263. Your own untouchable property.

1874.  W. R. Greg, Rocks Ahead, 45. Declaring this peasant’s farm inalienable,… untouchable for any debt.

  3.  Too bad or unpleasant to touch.

  Also, in recent use, as sb.: a Hindoo outcast.

1873.  Mrs. Whitney, Other Girls, x. Fried potatoes, or whatever else was economical and untouchable.

1920[?].  Great thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi, 101. I do not desire to be born again, but if I am really born again, I desire to be born amidst the untouchables, so as to share their difficulties and to work for their liberation.